Cute Places

26 January – 21 February 2019

What if we both imagine something and it is more or less similar to each other. It is a picture of a place we spent some time together between 2013 and 2015. It had a big plant, an old wooden floor, a piano that was out of tune, and a lamp that looked like a boat. That lamp is the first detail that we picture differently. It hangs from the ceiling and I picture it as the hull of a ship that is mostly underwater. I always imagined the rest of the boat sticking out of our upstairs neighbours floor. Like a submarine slowly sinking into my room. But without looking like a submarine.

For you the lamp might not have looked like a boat at all. You probably picture the lamp differently. If you would imagine four things in the room, what would you pick? Would you pick the speakers, the cactus, or the good vibes that we had there? How would you picture those vibes? When I imagine the vibes I picture the sunlight shining through the window casting a playful shadow inside. Or maybe I imagine the small monkey on top of the piano, a stuffed animal that held the cash for our rent underneath its spread legs. Maybe you wouldn’t picture good vibes at all. Maybe that place was like a prison for you, it was very small, and we didn’t have much space to ourselves. Maybe we imagine a completely different place. The pictured place is based on a memory after all.

Curated by Rosa Doornenbal

OPENING Thursday 24 January 2019, 6 – 8 pm

Jaana Alakoski (b. 1992) is a Swedish-Finnish artist based in London. Her practice evolves around performance as action and performance in image. She is concerned with online interaction as well as the performativity of being in any social reality. She explores symbolic encoding and decoding of selves, others and physical reality.

Guendalina Cerruti (b.1992) is an Italian born artist based in London. In her work she builds domestic furniture-related installations to carry things that serve as signifiers for an experience of her surroundings. Her interest in linguistic expressions is combined with decorative aesthetics and practices of intimate interior spaces.

Evita Vasiljeva (b. 1985) is a Latvian born artist based in Amsterdam. According to Vasiljeva, there is something more profound about the state of becoming, or falling apart, than about a finished state or fixated situation. In her practice, manual labour and intellectual exertions take place simultaneously and on the spot, to a degree of nearly being one and the same thing.