Julia Levstein

Exercises for Making a Place arises from a research project centered on paper. Although it is a light and fragile material, it possesses a remarkable capacity to generate spatialities. Julia Levstein’s work takes drawing as an essential point of departure, from which it expands into writing, video, sculpture, and objects. These works explore her movements between countries and cities, investigating the various qualities, singularities, and distinctions of the territories the artist inhabits.

Along these journeys, the transition and exchange between the urban and the domestic, the street and the home, the private and the public, become symbolic materials with which she seeks to create her own places. Here, newsprint functions as an object that connects these spaces, reconfigured with purposes that go beyond news and reading, adopting its use as a work surface, tool, image, material, or context.

In other dimensions of the lightness of paper, a group of works functions as prototypes of domestic furniture — chair, table, armchair, bookcase — designed to be unfolded in space by a group of people. Being made solely of paper, they slacken if not supported, dismantling their illusion of volume. When the pieces are at rest, they appear as soft, faded sculptures, containing the potential to unfold at any moment and reveal the qualities of their form. This points to a performative character in her work, as it necessarily takes place in a collaborative manner.

— Clarisa Appendino