Santiago Mostyn – The Promise (II)

THE PROMISE (II)

Evening Standard commissioned Stockholm-based artist Santiago Mostyn to conceive of a presentation of his work using the format of a party held at Evening Standard's home base, Platform in Stockholm. Mostyn's answer to this brief is The Promise (II), an event and environment in which the artist brings together new elements of past sculptural work, and a spatial intervention made using red pigment powder.

In The Promise (II) Mostyn builds a context for reflection on privilege, inclusion and utility. Using bright red powdered pigment placed on the floor in the party's main space, Mostyn created a form resembling a long red carpet of the kind used to signal importance and celebrity in the entertainment industry. The farthest end of the form is distorted perspectivally, creating the illusion as one enters the room that the 'carpet' is much longer than it in fact is. This disconcerting effect disrupts the integrity of this symbol, a gesture which is taken further when the party's guests arrive and start to walk through the red pigment, breaking up its edges. By the end of the event, the rectangular form of the carpet had completely disintegrated into formlessness, as the pigment was walked throughout the room and used spontaneously to write and draw on the walls of the room.

Another insertion in the event is a series of large plaster sculptures mounted in relation to architectural elements and objects in the room. These works are based on Batik stamps collected by Mostyn's mother in Ghana when he was a child. Mostyn had the stamps scanned and 3D-printed at a much larger scale, so that they correlate proportionally to the human body. This shift in scale invites reflection on the relationship of the hand to labour, in the case of the stamps, and the bodily scale more typical of sculptures to uselessness, contemplation and luxury. Speakers attached to live microphones were placed throughout the room, so that party guests could sing or say whatever they wished into the works. One instance of this was a spontaneous performance by artist and filmmaker Pella Kågerman of her work "Fake Orgasm Choir".

SANTIAGO MOSTYN is a Stockholm-based writer and photographer with a practice founded on culturally resonant personal histories. His prints, videos, texts, and installations derive from a candid engagement with subcultural communities around the world. Mostyn is a graduate of Yale University and the Royal Institute of Art, Stockholm, and has exhibited internationally at venues including Kunst-Werke Berlin, Malmö Konsthall, Mass MoCA, and the Hasselblad Foundation. His work has been profiled by The New Yorker, Interview Magazine, BBC Radio, and Creative Time Reports, among others.

The event is curated by Cameron MacLeod and Roger von Reybekiel.