Nora Turato at LambdaLambdaLambda

Artist: Nora Turato

Exhibition title: don’t tell me where this is going, i loooo-ooooo-ooove surpris-es

Venue: LambdaLambdaLambda, Prishtina, Kosovo

Date: June 18 – August 21, 2021

Photography: marcelkoehler.com / Courtesy of the artist and LambdaLambdaLambda, Prishtina

Nora Turato is a punchline critter. There is no phrase of hers I haven’t heard before so I am left with the question as to why they’re punchlines. Sure, her words are common, even if turned as they are into pictures, murals, and fun graphic design exercises. But this can’t be the reason.

When we Zoomed before I wrote this text, she mentioned to me one of her sentences for the new show at LambdaLambdaLambda in Prishtina. Hearing those words, I experienced my familiar mode of Turato-response: being puzzled as every collection of phrases sounds like clickbait bonanza. Weirdly, Nora Turato tells me what my Youtube tells me. Or it is the other way round. The coincidence is uncanny.

I haven’t touched any drumsticks ever since my puberty, yet my Youtube assures me I should watch Larnell Lewis Hears “Enter Sandman” For The First Time: the jazz drummer nailing heavy metal’s lack of swing for the amusement of the drumming community. I confess: I must have clicked on drum videos twice a few years ago, but come on Youtube, that’s too much guesswork. And then, afterwards, life gives me more than I ask: Larnell Lewis Hears “Enter Sandman” For The First Time comes back on Nora Turato’s Instagram, mystifying things to me.

That must be it. I must be feeling punched by that otherwise common line when the incomprehensible happens. Why is Youtube showing precisely that thing to me? Why is Nora Turato? I won’t use the word conspiracy here but the feeling is close to what I felt when I randomly bumped into my very boring cousin on a flight to Los Angeles: too strange to be true, what is going on, I pondered. On occasions, I just get surprised that Nora Turato exists.

A Nora Turato moment for me is a bit like what Enzio de Kiipt said about Clark Ashton Smith: plunging into the most fecund and tenebrous depths of our life to return with unsettling lore. She just does it, a kind of magic. There is no averting this.

Piero Bisello

Nora Turato’s exhibition “don’t tell me where this is going, i loooo-ooooo-ooove surpris-es” consists of the exhibition at the gallery as well as the video “none of this matters in a real world” (2021) that is being screened at random intervals on the big screen in front of Grand Hotel Prishtina (a 1 min. walk from the gallery) throughout the duration of the exhibition.

Exhibition view, Nora Turato, don’t tell me where this is going, i loooo-ooooo-ooove surpris-es, LambdaLambdaLambda, Prishtina, 2021

Nora Turato, don’t tell me where this is going, i loooo-ooooo-ooove surpris-es, 2021, vitreous enamel on steel, 192 x 120 cm (two elements)

Exhibition view, Nora Turato, don’t tell me where this is going, i loooo-ooooo-ooove surpris-es, LambdaLambdaLambda, Prishtina, 2021; doandOOoTHistamee, 2021, wallpainting: Edding permanent marker on ceramic tiles, 15.70 x 2.70 (H) m

Details, doandOOoTHistamee, 2021, wallpainting: Edding permanent marker on ceramic tiles, 15.70 x 2.70 (H) m

Exhibition view, Nora Turato, don’t tell me where this is going, i loooo-ooooo-ooove surpris-es, LambdaLambdaLambda/ Sheshi Zahir Pajaziti (public space), Prishtina, 2021; none of this matters in a real world, 2021, Digital video, no sound, looped, 05’00’’