{"id":3590,"date":"2024-08-16T15:22:01","date_gmt":"2024-08-16T03:22:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ivanlupi.com\/?p=3590"},"modified":"2024-08-22T08:13:57","modified_gmt":"2024-08-21T20:13:57","slug":"solitaire-243-km-and-136-5-hours-performance-as-part-of-ivan-lupis-musings-solo-exhibition-at-the-city-art-depot-christchurch-2024","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ivanlupi.com\/index.php\/2024\/08\/16\/solitaire-243-km-and-136-5-hours-performance-as-part-of-ivan-lupis-musings-solo-exhibition-at-the-city-art-depot-christchurch-2024\/","title":{"rendered":"‘SOLITAIRE’, 243 km and 136.5 hours performance as part of ‘Ivan Lupi’s musings’ solo exhibition at the City Art Depot, Christchurch 2024."},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Ivan Lupi\u2019s art is inseparable from the artist\u2019s person, whether that be through performances, autobiographical reference, the fascination with bodily integrity and skin (tattoo, scarification, wounding) as a medium, or through external artworks that integrate with these elements. Lupi is best known as a performance artist whose work subversively tests the physical limits of the artist\u2019s own body in a dialogue with personal or social issues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One component of Musings<\/em> is A Set of Pleasant Feelings<\/em>, an exhibition of art works, extending around three walls of the City Art Depot space. These are explorations of duration and movement as a physical record of a bodily action, similar conceptually to Gerhard Richter\u2019s \u2018squeegee\u2019 abstractions and Bernard Frize\u2019s continuous brushstroke paintings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
From: ‘Solitaire’, 243 km and 136.5 hours performance. City Art Depot – (Christchurch, 2024). Picture: Heather Joy Milne Photographs.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Each painting is built up from a continuous line in one take in various media by the blindfolded artist. The control, duration and direction of the line is mediated, on one hand, by mood, posture, bodily discomfort and responding to internal stimuli and rhythms, and on the other hand, how long the medium lasts. Visual cues are excluded by the blindfold. As with walking a medieval labyrinth, the artist enters a highly focussed, lucid state of pared-back awareness, a kind of satori. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
1 hour 19 minutes 16 seconds continuous line with my eyes closed<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
From: ‘Solitaire’, 243 km and 136.5 hours performance. City Art Depot – (Christchurch, 2024). Picture: Heather Joy Milne Photographs.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

This work, a process of self-soothing, healing meditation, counterpoints Lupi\u2019s history of physical, sometimes painful durational performances. Whereas much of Lupi\u2019s work explores the artist\u2019s skin as medium and threshold through tattooing and scarring performances, and the scoring\/piercing of photographs, this new work is an exercise in continuous line-making with an oil-based marker on a more traditional ground of wooden panels, gesso primed and coated in acrylic paint. This is the first time Lupi has worked on wood, previously working on paper and canvas with pastel, charcoal and pencil.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
From: ‘Solitaire’, 243 km and 136.5 hours performance. City Art Depot – (Christchurch, 2024). Picture: Heather Joy Milne Photographs.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The other component, Solitaire<\/em>, is a long durational performance by Lupi where the artist plays a game of \u2018solitaire\u2019 where the cards are replaced with anonymised photographs, reversed and traced through pierced holes or otherwise obscured, of late family members. Lupi associates solitaire with summer holidays with the artist\u2019s grandparents, and as the last surviving member of Lupi\u2019s immediate Italian family, this also becomes a meditation on emotion, relation, and being a European immigrant in Aotearoa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
From: ‘Solitaire’, 243 km and 136.5 hours performance. City Art Depot – (Christchurch, 2024). Picture: Heather Joy Milne Photographs.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Lupi sits at a desk in the space during City Art Depot\u2019s opening hours for three weeks with no breaks. The experience, like the longueurs in Last Year in Marienbad<\/em> or the silence of John Cage\u2019s 4\u203233\u2033<\/em> highlights continuous passages of presence and awareness, or as Heidegger would have it, Dasein<\/em> \u2013 \u2018beingness\u2019.Each panel in A Set of Pleasant Feelings <\/em>is a individual unit of an overall conceptual aesthetic declaration of human complexity and human capacity for self-awareness and healing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Andrew Paul Wood
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ivan Lupi\u2019s art is inseparable from the artist\u2019s person, whether that be through performances, autobiographical reference, the fascination with bodily integrity and skin (tattoo, scarification, wounding) as a medium, or through external artworks that integrate with these elements. Lupi is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3594,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4],"tags":[8,138,137,22,102,30,33,37,139],"class_list":["post-3590","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-exhibitions","tag-art","tag-city-art-depot","tag-family","tag-identity","tag-longdurationalperformance","tag-performance-art","tag-photography","tag-self","tag-solitaire"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/ivanlupi.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/GalleryBW-85.jpg?fit=1667%2C2333&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8EPTR-VU","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":5521,"url":"https:\/\/ivanlupi.com\/index.php\/2025\/10\/28\/before-and-after-george\/","url_meta":{"origin":3590,"position":0},"title":"‘Before And After George’","author":"ivanlupi","date":"28th October 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"Ivan Lupi \u2018Before and After George\u2019 Julia Ilina, Art historian Any object of art has a material and a method of working with it. However, such art forms as performative practices are difficult to define, as the boundaries between material and methods are blurred. An art historian RoseLee Goldberg wrote:\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Events"","block_context":{"text":"Events","link":"https:\/\/ivanlupi.com\/index.php\/category\/events\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/ivanlupi.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/052A8753-copy.jpg?fit=1200%2C800&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/ivanlupi.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/052A8753-copy.jpg?fit=1200%2C800&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/ivanlupi.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/052A8753-copy.jpg?fit=1200%2C800&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/ivanlupi.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/052A8753-copy.jpg?fit=1200%2C800&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/ivanlupi.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/052A8753-copy.jpg?fit=1200%2C800&ssl=1&resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":3607,"url":"https:\/\/ivanlupi.com\/index.php\/2024\/08\/22\/the-call\/","url_meta":{"origin":3590,"position":1},"title":"‘The call’","author":"ivanlupi","date":"22nd August 2024","format":false,"excerpt":"The action is a response to gender mannerisms and the perception of self-identification embedded in the structures of heteronormative society. Coinciding with the 60th edition of the Venice Biennale, and guided by the principles of 2024 International Art Exhibition, PERFORMATICA 2024: \"Foreign Bodies all Over\" aims to explore and populate\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Art Festivals"","block_context":{"text":"Art Festivals","link":"https:\/\/ivanlupi.com\/index.php\/category\/art-festivals\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/ivanlupi.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/2024_0725_1157d_venice_s_marco_ivan_lupi.jpg?fit=900%2C1200&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/ivanlupi.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/2024_0725_1157d_venice_s_marco_ivan_lupi.jpg?fit=900%2C1200&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/ivanlupi.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/2024_0725_1157d_venice_s_marco_ivan_lupi.jpg?fit=900%2C1200&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/ivanlupi.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/2024_0725_1157d_venice_s_marco_ivan_lupi.jpg?fit=900%2C1200&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":2619,"url":"https:\/\/ivanlupi.com\/index.php\/2023\/08\/19\/high-time\/","url_meta":{"origin":3590,"position":2},"title":"‘HIGH TIME’","author":"ivanlupi","date":"19th August 2023","format":false,"excerpt":"'In the action I activate an evolving device using sheets of paper and found material. 20.000 sheets of paper are stood on, picked up, left falling on the floor, 7 hours a day for 30 days'. In the picture: Ivan Lupi performing 'High time', and Nicolas Woollaston installation: 'Storming the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Events"","block_context":{"text":"Events","link":"https:\/\/ivanlupi.com\/index.php\/category\/events\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/ivanlupi.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/0P6A8450.jpg?fit=1181%2C787&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/ivanlupi.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/0P6A8450.jpg?fit=1181%2C787&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/ivanlupi.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/0P6A8450.jpg?fit=1181%2C787&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/ivanlupi.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/0P6A8450.jpg?fit=1181%2C787&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/ivanlupi.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/0P6A8450.jpg?fit=1181%2C787&ssl=1&resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":58,"url":"https:\/\/ivanlupi.com\/index.php\/2016\/09\/25\/ivan-lupis-circadian-rhythm-4\/","url_meta":{"origin":3590,"position":3},"title":"‘Fountain’","author":"ivanlupi","date":"25th September 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"In 1917, Duchamp changed the original significance of a urinal, re-contextualizing it as a work of art, with the aim to shift the focus from art as mere physical crafting to a deeper intellectual interpretation. Gender is often something I concern myself with when it comes to my art. In\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Art Residencies"","block_context":{"text":"Art Residencies","link":"https:\/\/ivanlupi.com\/index.php\/category\/art-residencies\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/ivanlupi.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/uffi-e1531446592355.jpg?fit=1200%2C800&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/ivanlupi.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/uffi-e1531446592355.jpg?fit=1200%2C800&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/ivanlupi.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/uffi-e1531446592355.jpg?fit=1200%2C800&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/ivanlupi.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/uffi-e1531446592355.jpg?fit=1200%2C800&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/ivanlupi.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/uffi-e1531446592355.jpg?fit=1200%2C800&ssl=1&resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":31,"url":"https:\/\/ivanlupi.com\/index.php\/2016\/09\/25\/ivan-lupis-circadian-rhythm\/","url_meta":{"origin":3590,"position":4},"title":"‘Afternoon snack’","author":"ivanlupi","date":"25th September 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"\u00a0","rel":"","context":"In "Art Residencies"","block_context":{"text":"Art Residencies","link":"https:\/\/ivanlupi.com\/index.php\/category\/art-residencies\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/ivanlupi.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/ufficialedsc_2322.jpg?fit=800%2C1200&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/ivanlupi.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/ufficialedsc_2322.jpg?fit=800%2C1200&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/ivanlupi.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/ufficialedsc_2322.jpg?fit=800%2C1200&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/ivanlupi.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/ufficialedsc_2322.jpg?fit=800%2C1200&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":2429,"url":"https:\/\/ivanlupi.com\/index.php\/2023\/05\/23\/durational-rapture-untimely-series\/","url_meta":{"origin":3590,"position":5},"title":"‘DURATIONAL RAPTURE’ (Untimely series)","author":"ivanlupi","date":"23rd May 2023","format":false,"excerpt":"From: 'Durational rapture' as part of 'Ivan Lupi's Untimely series'. Scott Lawrie Gallery. Auckland, 2023. Credits: V. Garg The artist's mother passed at the age of 39, when Lupi was 8. In the action, Lupi interacts with three of her original belongings. The audience is invited to be part of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Events"","block_context":{"text":"Events","link":"https:\/\/ivanlupi.com\/index.php\/category\/events\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/ivanlupi.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/87EC32E7-1E7A-438C-B794-291F801BC13B-scaled.jpg?fit=1200%2C1200&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/ivanlupi.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/87EC32E7-1E7A-438C-B794-291F801BC13B-scaled.jpg?fit=1200%2C1200&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/ivanlupi.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/87EC32E7-1E7A-438C-B794-291F801BC13B-scaled.jpg?fit=1200%2C1200&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/ivanlupi.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/87EC32E7-1E7A-438C-B794-291F801BC13B-scaled.jpg?fit=1200%2C1200&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/ivanlupi.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/87EC32E7-1E7A-438C-B794-291F801BC13B-scaled.jpg?fit=1200%2C1200&ssl=1&resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ivanlupi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3590","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ivanlupi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ivanlupi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ivanlupi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ivanlupi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3590"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ivanlupi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3590\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3596,"href":"https:\/\/ivanlupi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3590\/revisions\/3596"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ivanlupi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3594"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ivanlupi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3590"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ivanlupi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3590"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ivanlupi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3590"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}