about this work

Tuttilino is a special edition developed by Manfred Pernice to coincide with the exhibition of déjàVu at Dundee Contemporary Arts, in partnership with Modern Art Oxford and SMAK, Ghent. Conceived as a project in three stages the exhibition was subtly transformed following the artist’s experiences in each location.

The centre-piece of the exhibition déjàVu was a re-presentation of Tutti (2010). Referencing Pernice’s earlier ‘can’ structures or Dosen, the sculpture reveals four room-sized quadrants and is complete with a spiral staircase that elevates the viewer. This sculpture as vessel housed part of the exhibition including a number of lino-cut prints created at the DCA print studio; as well as becoming the site for various settings, its content rearticulated and modified as it journeys from place to place i.e. linoleum was selected as a floor covering at DCA whilst carpet was laid in Oxford.

The screen printed imagery in Tuttilino was collated from a number of local sources during Pernice’s time in Dundee including the nearby Kirkcaldy Museum which catalogues the linoleum industry. Local company Michael Nairn & Co. was at one time the largest producers of linoleum in the world. One image is of the Nairn factory in the 1940s when the building was used to produce bombs. The monotype foreground déjàVu motif is unique to each print – the blurring of the inks depicting a failed photograph taken by Pernice of a staircase winding around a can-kiosk in Berlin.

(courtesy of Dundee Contemporary Arts)

about Manfred Pernice