Runa Islam: Lost Cinema Lost: Tobias Putrih

Modena, Italy: The Galleria Civica di Modena, 2008. Hardcover. VG. Parallel text in Italian and English. Tan boards, 80 pp, profuse large color images. Parallel text in Italian and English. A double solo exhibition housed simultaneously in the rooms of Palazzo Santa Margherita. The exhibition opened 27th January, 2008, under the title Runa Islam LOST CINEMA LOST Tobias Putrih, curated by Milovan Farronato, organised and produced by Galleria Civica di Modena and the Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Modena. Runa Islam and Tobias Putrih here display a new series of works especially designed for this occasion. The two artists have thus set out on an unprecedented collaboration project aimed at offering two separate projects, yet ones which feed off an ongoing dialogue and a well-balanced co-habitation. Runa Islam returned to Italy with three unseen works created in 2006/2007 and put on show in Modena for the first time, including the film Merchants of Venice, produced by the Galleria Civica di Modena and the Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Modena. The sense conveyed by the exhibition is completed with the presence of a number of previous works, both film works and sculptures, never seen previously in Italy. Tobias Putrih presented two film theatres and a luminous installation. Art, architecture and the human dimension are still the key elements which characterise his work. Cinema theatres continue to interest him in terms of providing the physical space for personal annihilation in the search for satisfaction. Lost Cinema Lost (the common title of the exhibition), for Islam means the cinema of lost origins, that which through its elementary magic managed to come up with new and unreal images simply through the overlapping of two stills. For Putrih on the other hand, lost cinema is one of a series of spaces (along with department stores, amusement parks and other non-spaces) which mark the collapse and failure of both an individual and a collective utopia.