Grandstander
In 2026, I guest curated for Nino Gherzi’s solo exhibition at Ida’s Room in Berlin.
Links:
Text below:
The Minotaur is working out. He is not, on present evidence, getting much bigger.
Nino Gherzi’s Exhibition Grandstander invites you into the luscious visual world of his Minotaurs. They have bull heads but boyish bodies as they stretch and flex across violently pretty expanses of colour. But Minotaurs ought to be hulking, murderous, libidinal - after all they are the heavyweight champions of the labyrinth.
Gherzi’s Minotaurs seem closer to wonky twigs. They appear to be bridging that gap through physical exercise. In these works, masculinity is something you can train for or at the very least posture through appearances. Exercising and looking like you exercise are not quite the same thing - and in our world of gym mirror selfies and anonymous abs on Grindr, appearance becomes half the battle.
The Minotaur before you is deflated, not disappeared. With the depiction of the overdetermined masculine Minotaur on the form of what appears to be a silk scarf, the scene gets stranger. A monster associated with stone, labyrinths and bodily force ends up on something soft, light, decorative, foldable. Nino’s colour choice is ecstatic. The figures stretch out on the scarves, losing senses of typical anatomy – though what is typical or expected for a mythological creature? – and becoming part of his patterns, reminiscent of Matisse cut-outs but informed by his mothers and grandmothers obsessive tradition of patternmaking in Switzerland. In the scarves, exercise is completely removed from the context of the gym. Exertion becomes a feather light ballet. Muscle and body are simply reduced to ornament, a pretty motif.
Although we find these stretched on a wall, a scarf isn't only looked at. It gets folded, knotted, draped, sweated into, worn against somebody else's skin. The Minotaur is no longer something to run away from, a monster of masculine expectations and virile ideals. Instead, he becomes something to put on, to drape, and to adorn oneself with. These scarves originated within Nino’s larger installation Biiig Bull and therefore arrive at Ida's Room as remnants of another environment, rather than isolated designs. Old, hay-stuffed and worn out boxing gloves, antique weights, exercise bands, bull heads in all their heady prowess, serve as accoutrements, “de-horned” by stitches and ribbons. The display is intentionally excessive and exaggerated.
Across those transformations, Nino has kept masculinity mobile. Masculinity is costume, posture, workout routine, decorative motif, something rehearsed and performed, rather than securely owned. His Minotaurs might not be gaining any muscle, but they’ll keep flexing anyway.