Dearest, these are my notes
For my
Thriller.
1. Do you believe the world loves you?
Sister said to Satan: my diary is too hot for you is a new installation by artists Josefin Arnell and Margaret Haines, presenting a collection of moving image, texts and posters exploring their shared interests in the themes of destiny and mysticism. Taken as a whole, the exhibition presents a shifting cast of culturally identifiable yet unattainable performers, appearing momentarily as apparitions across the exhibitions spaces, living double lives.
2. I eat. I have sex. I go to a gallery dinner. I throw up in the alley.
Arnell and Haines’ images slip between screens and display systems scattered across the exhibition space: their sliding narratives inviting a sense of telos that underpins the movements of characters throughout the works. Enacting perverted prophecies, the characters throughout the films occupy the position of actors in a wider plan, with boundaries and intentions that aren’t clear, walking dreamlike through a no man’s land of time and space out of joint. Ideas of hauntology hover at the edges, staining the environments with an implacable time, time that is undeniably current but broken, creating a new kind of fictional mode of exhibition making: one of mythologies.
3. What is the difference between auto insurance and a belief in god?
Sister said to Satan: my diary is too hot for you evokes legends and gods both contemporary and consigned to history. Alongside the specific naming of certain characters from mythology, the artists create powerful depictions of spaces on the peripheries of reality, ones characterised by youthful desires for escape and endorphins but anchored in the mundane reality of teenage life.
The exhibition has been made possible with support from Canada House, Goethe-Institut London, The Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in London and The Embassy of Sweden in London.
Auto Italia’s commissions are made possible by our Exhibition Circle and Member supporters.
Josefin Arnell (b. 1984, Sweden) is a visual artist, currently based in Amsterdam. Working in video, performance, installation and printed media, her work considers aspects of documentary and fiction and navigates the space between exuberance and self-exploitation. Her film Mothership goes to Brazil (2016) premiered at International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (2016) and has recently been shown at Kunsthalle Münster (2017). Her recent solo and group exhibitions include Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2017); Beursschouwburg, Brussels (2017); and Contemporary Art Center Vilnius, Vilnius (2017).
Margaret Haines (b. 1984, Canada) works between Amsterdam and Los Angeles. Her latest films are multifaceted meandering narratives riddled with philosophical investigation, with her shooting and editing style mixing staged scenes with improvised encounters. Between 2015-16 she was resident at Rijksakademie, Amsterdam. Her work has been exhibited and screened at ltd los angeles, Los Angeles (2017); Carroll Fletcher Gallery, London (2017); ICA, London (2016); and 1646, The Hague (2015).
