Karen Lamassonne: Ruido / Noise
Ruido / Noise is the first international survey of the work of Colombian American artist Karen Lamassonne.
Karen Lamassonne, Ruido / Noise (2022) by Karen LamassonneSwiss Institute / Contemporary Art New York
Lamassonne was a central figure in the male-dominated Cali and Bogotá art and film scenes of the 1970s and 80s. Throughout her career, she has maintained a focus on self-portraiture and depictions of intimacy.
Karen Lamassonne: Ruido / Noise, installation view (2022) by Karen LamassonneSwiss Institute / Contemporary Art New York
Her practice was initially centered on painting, yet her involvement with cinema led to an engagement with video, photography, animation, storyboarding and art direction.
Los Alférez Real, Sobre Isaacs, Ventana Indiscreta (2022) by Karen LamassonneSwiss Institute / Contemporary Art New York
Spanning from her early years to today, the exhibit at Swiss Institute shows Lamassonne’s radical, longstanding commitment to portraying women as desiring subjects.
Karen Lamassonne: Ruido / Noise, installation view (2022) by Karen LamassoneSwiss Institute / Contemporary Art New York
Paisaje (Landscape)
Paisaje (Landscape), from 1975, is one of a series of airbrush paintings by the artist that render figures at the scale of landscapes.
Lamassonne’s early pencil drawings and airbrush paintings include subjects and motifs that she would continue to pursue throughout her career.
Karen Lamassonne: Ruido / Noise, installation view (2022) by Karen LamassonneSwiss Institute / Contemporary Art New York
Homenaje a Cali (Homage to Cali)
Lamassonne’s Homenaje a Cali (Homage to Cali) series of paintings from 1989 features giant lovers dominating the lurid city skyline in scenes reminiscent of Attack of the 50-Foot Woman.
Los Alférez Real, Sobre Isaacs, Ventana Indiscreta (2022) by Karen LamassonneSwiss Institute / Contemporary Art New York
This well-known pop cultural association, as well as the palette and the scale, demonstrate the influence that working in film was having on the artist at the time whilst also recalling early works in which bodies were drawn into landscapes.
Installation view of Bańos Watercolor Series (2022) by Karen LamassonneSwiss Institute / Contemporary Art New York
Baños watercolor series
The Baños watercolor series (1978-81) are paintings of lone women in decoratively tiled bathrooms, mostly naked or in some state of undress.
Many of the paintings have a serene or restful atmosphere, suggesting that the bathroom is here acting as a “room of one’s own” – the space Virginia Woolf described as requisite for women to be able write fiction.
Lamassonne has tended to describe the figures in these paintings as herself, though they are usually anonymized by being seen only from the shoulders down or from the back. The figure is posed on toilets and bidets, and in showers and baths.
A number of these paintings were shown in an exhibition at the Galería del Club de Ejecutivos in Cali in 1979, which was prematurely shut down because some of the “executives” – men who used the space for meetings – felt unable to conduct their business in view of “obscenities".
While it remains unclear what the source of the outrage was, it seems likely that it was the matter-of-factness of a body pictured with bathroom fixtures that was troubling, meant that the paintings described a boundary that was quickly policed in the name of female propriety.
Sueño Húmedo, Sueño Húmedo I, Sueño Humedo VI (2022) by Karen LamassonneSwiss Institute / Contemporary Art New York
Sueños Húmedos (Wet Dreams)
Following her experience in cinema, Lamassonne began taking photographic series with narrative sequences, following unidentified bodies in playful, sensual or ambivalent scenarios.
Amanecida, Sueno húmedo III, TV Ruido, Sueno húmedo II (2022) by Karen LamassonneSwiss Institute / Contemporary Art New York
Sueños Húmedos (Wet Dreams)
In the series Sueños Húmedos (Wet Dreams), Lamassonne highlights elements of the images in colorful crayon, suggesting heat or energy that is emerging. As in many of her earlier paintings, legs stand in for entire bodies, entangled with others or laid on the floor.
Karen Lamassonne: Ruido / Noise, installation view (2022) by Karen LamassonneSwiss Institute / Contemporary Art New York
Ruido (Noise)
This is the first realization of an installation that Lamassonne proposed in 1984 entitled Ruido (Noise). It features an experimental video of the same name made by Lamassonne while the artist lived in New York City one winter.
Ruido (noise) (2022) by Karen LamassonneSwiss Institute / Contemporary Art New York
The video contrasts the heat of a lone, naked body pitched against other environments and temperatures, including the freezing city snow.
Karen Lamassonne: Ruido / Noise, installation view (2022) by Karen LamassonneSwiss Institute / Contemporary Art New York
The glow of the television playing this video and others, which play static snow, are the only lights in this darkened space, illuminating and animating the paintings installed around them, each depicting a woman’s body illuminated by the glow of a TV.
Karen Lamassonne: Ruido / Noise, installation view (2022) by Karen LamassonneSwiss Institute / Contemporary Art New York
Cali is Colombia’s third largest city, and when Lamassonne arrived in the mid 1970s it had recently undergone a vast urbanization project to host the Pan American games in 1971.
Al pie del Bus, La Venida de la Ceiba, Ruby Tuesday (2022) by Karen LamassonneSwiss Institute / Contemporary Art New York
As Inti Guerrero has written, the city “had a new urban tissue that enabled anonymity,” creating “new places to fondle and date, and new dynamics of courtship and cruising.”
Though by 1989 cartel violence had begun to increase as a result of the US “War on Drugs,” Lamassonne’s paintings are a celebration of the city’s sensual life, even in the face of risk.
Karen Lamassonne: Ruido / Noise, installation view (2022) by Karen LamassonneSwiss Institute / Contemporary Art New York
Pura Sangre (Pure Blood)
In the 1980s, Lamassonne became involved with a number of filmmakers known as the Grupo de Cali (Cali Group), who often employed popular B-movie genres such as horror or crime to create political allegories that also skewered mainstream Colombian cinema.
Pura Sangre (Pure Blood) (2022) by Karen LamassonneSwiss Institute / Contemporary Art New York
Pura Sangre (Pure Blood)
Displayed here are selected scenes from Lamassonne’s storyboard for Pura Sangre, a horror thriller centering on a rich sugar magnate who survives on the fresh blood of murder victims.
Karen Lamassonne: Ruido / Noise, installation view (2022) by Karen LamassonneSwiss Institute / Contemporary Art New York
In an example of Lamassonne revisiting older working methods with new technology, here she drew a number of scenes cell by cell and years later animated them as GIFs.
These short, mostly comic animations take their title from the 24 frames per second that cinema film uses, though the stop motion technique employed to make them is far slower.
Installation View (2022) by Karen LamassonneSwiss Institute / Contemporary Art New York
Lamassonne always drew from life to make her early paintings, using models, mirrors or her own body. In 1978 she had a camera for the first time and made numerous self portraits, some of which recall motifs from her early paintings, such as the body in the bath.
Karen Lamassonne: Ruido / Noise, installation view (2022) by Karen LamassonneSwiss Institute / Contemporary Art New York
Several of the portraits have a comic note to them, such as the photograph of the artist with her head in a refrigerator or wearing an improvised garment made from a watermelon.
Karen Lamassonne: Ruido / Noise, installation view (2022) by Karen LamassonneSwiss Institute / Contemporary Art New York
Following the 2019 death of Luis Ospina, who was Lamassonne’s partner for many years, the artist began revisiting her archive of postcards. During lockdown periods of 2020 she began to extend the imagery on the front of the cards in surreal and surprising directions.
Mano peluda (Hairy Hand) (2022) by Karen LamassonneSwiss Institute / Contemporary Art New York
In recent years, Lamassonne has created drawings and sculptures of “hairy” or “monster” hands. These resemble props from movies that Lamassonne might have worked on in the past, but they are also connected to the myths of the monstrous spirits of the Colombian countryside.
