LAURENCE STURLA
Official Opening
January 20, 2022
12– 6 pm
Gianni Manhattan is pleased to announce the official opening of Through tongue and soil, Laurence Sturla’s first solo show with the gallery.
“We call them murmurations, but the Danish term, sort sol, is better: black sun.” (1)
Murmurations are a flocking behaviour displayed by starlings in flight in the hours just after sunset. This amorphous mass of birds served ancient Roman seers as a vessel to interpret the signs of the Gods, the birds’ movements were read as omens for city building, agriculture and war.
The studying of divine signs, offerings, animal sacrifices and superstitious behaviour open up spaces where non-discursive thinking could happen, tapping into the collective human experience of knowing things without quite grasping how they came into being, dowsing the gut instincts.
Sturla’s practice is located within these zones where distinctions between our own recent histories, archeological pasts and mythology continue to disintegrate as they are reformed into new futures through acts of dredging and reclamation.