LB°20 — Artists
ARKIV
Santiago Mostyn (b. 1981, San Francisco) is an artist based in Stockholm.
Silver Museum
Untitled (Leaf Slice), 2014
Untitled (Leaf Stamp), 2014
Untitled (Loop Stamp), 2014
Untitled (Loop Stamp), 2014
Plaster
Santiago Mostyn is interested in the grey area between personal memories and historical narratives; in how one can suddenly turn into the other. Mostyn’s at once ethereal and compact plaster sculptures question the use-value of a given object, and what happens when you enlarge a tool sized for the hand to being relative to the size of a body. Very little of the knowledge lodged in our hands is theorised, and this is perhaps especially so for the hands of an artisan. Mostyn’s objects are enlargements of batik stamps originally made of wood. Mostyn got the stamps from his mother, who worked teaching textiles in the newly independent Zimbabwe of the 1980s. What is the cultural effect of the shift from the originals to these enlarged relics? The sculptures suddenly appear as remnants – like the marble sculptures of antiquity – but from some parallel history.
Havremagasinet
The Promise, 2013
Video loop
In Mostyn’s video loop The Promise, something very small – a vertebrae of an Alligator Gar – is enlarged and examined through a 3D rendition. This fish is known as a ”living fossil” because it has existed continuously for 100 million years. Integrated into the installation, the bone hovers and turns, and the video provides a sense of the vertebrae gazing back at us from the point of view of history or the extra-human. The Promise represents something both sculptural and monumental, alluding to shapes and aesthetics that guide and support us, both literally and historically.
Santiago Mostyn (b. 1981, San Francisco) is an artist based in Stockholm.
Work
Untitled (Leaf Slice), 2014
Untitled (Leaf Stamp), 2014
Untitled (Loop Stamp), 2014
Untitled (Loop Stamp), 2014
Plaster
Location
The Silver Museum
21.11–14.2
Work
The Promise, 2013
Video loop
Location
Havremagasinet, Boden
21.11–14.2
