Somagnosia

Matteo Cantarella is pleased to present ‘Somagnosia’, a solo exhibition by Danish artists Emil Grüner and Sylvester Vogelius. The exhibition marks Grüner Vogelius’ first solo presentation in Denmark, and features a newly conceived installation which expands on the notion of opacity as a form of resistance to legibility and representation. The exhibition is accompanied by Point of Contact, a poem specifically composed by Nigerian writer Logan February. The title Somagnosia references Japanese author Yasunari Kawabata’s late - and seemingly unfinished - novel “Dandelions”. Somagnosia is described as a fictional illness - ‘an effort not see a part of yourself, of a loved one, of life. A blindness that stems [from] some deep wounds’.Exploring trauma, temporality and what it means to see, the exhibition Somagnosia is a glimpse into the undisclosed - an invitation to look beyond what is immediately perceptible, and to dwell in the depths of what stands before our sensing eyes. Untethered from spatial or temporal coordinates, Somagnosia suggests a new epistemology of the living body, encouraged to gravitate - without ever landing - in a transient stance between what was and its undoing. It is in this indeterminate state of being that subjectivity can relinquish the grains of representation and reveal itself shattered in erratic fragments. Grüner Vogelius’ interdisciplinary practice deals with concepts of queer identity, adaptation and community, filtered through sculptural interventions, installations and writing. Often including personal objects, microorganisms and found materials, their sculptures and installations engage in a critical resistance to the ways subjectivity is formalized and assimilated. Sheathed in a process that involves various melted materials and hardening plastics, items of nostalgic and emotional significance are intentionally concealed of their identity as their contours vanish in malleable resins. By prompting formlessness as an affirmative state of being, Grüner Vogelius seek to subvert the paradigm of the visible, and establish new points of contact with those fading and haunting substrates where a different reading of the self can ultimately emerge. Emil Grüner (b. 1990, Denmark) and Sylvester Vogelius (b. 1992, Denmark) are Danish multidisciplinary artists, living and working in Berlin, Germany and in Copenhagen, Denmark. Grüner Vogelius attended Städelschule, Staatliche Hochschule für Bildende Künste in Frankfurt, Germany (2021), and hold a BFA from the The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts (2019), Funen Art Academy (2018) and from the Royal Danish School of Architecture (2013). Their work has been exhibited at Warm Orgy (Tbilisi, Georgia), Kunsthal Charlottenborg (Copenhagen, Denmark), 17th International Architecture Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia (Venice, Italy), Diskothek Melancholie (Berlin, Germany) and at Karma Klubb (Oslo, Norway) among others.