Notes on RIP RIB Livia Prawitz MFA solo exhibition, Konstfack March 16 - March 25, 2023
Livia Prawitz, RIP RIB, MFA solo, installation view, Galleri Konstfack, 2023
Livia Prawitz's MFA solo exhibition RIP RIB at Galleri Konstfack already from the offset, by its homophonic title is devised to evoke physical rupture or corporeal imagery to mind and is carved in the same visceral air as some of the artworks. If the title lets on certain dramatic effect; the exhibition in contrast is quiet and demure and sparse in material staging. You’ll know what thematic and sculptural realm you have before you - and that’s partially familiar and chartered territory - but the exhibition reads like a novella where things are mediated between and in the gaps of the works rather than in. While words as the powerful title will have you know is of essence; they too do mostly not explicitly outline the presented works. The artist clearly works with words with real great panache as proves as you’ll find the wording of a poetic short story found as a takeaway booklet; ”Tvåla in alla kroppsdelarna” (Ladder all the body parts”).
Livia Prawitz, RIP RIB, MFA solo, installation view, Galleri Konstfack, 2023
The jumpcuts between polar states in immaterial or material form; between e.g. force and restrainment; the corporeally unfussy direct and poetic subtleties is what makes for stimulus to think the exhibition a second or third round once exiting the gallery. Already that is a win; latching on to the viewer with a grip that begins by entry or even before (title) but does not quite end there. A sculpture of a rusty looking pipe joined with a chained heart with teeth imprint felt particularly strong and exciting as a watch. On a hunch brought to mind the genre of "body horror" in cinema that has been particularly present in recent years where violations of the body not rarely serve as allegories for psychological phenomena. Another, but larger work; a spatially intervening installation alluding to the body as a temple to nurture amid deceptive delusions was nicely staged in the gallery making it look so effortless when in reality the space is quite complex and imposing as more than one grad candidate over the years has come to note in conversation.
Ashik Zaman
Livia Prawitz, RIP RIB, MFA solo, installation view, Galleri Konstfack, 2023