The Regulating Line (2005), a recently acquired work by Shahryar Nashat, is being shown for all summer in the Project Room of the Videoteca GAM.

Shahryar Nashat brings the vision of contemporary art into a holy sanctuary of ancient art – inside the Louvre, in one of its most imposing galleries, where huge canvases by Peter Paul Rubens surround the visitor like great altarpieces, telling the story, which is as fascinating as it is time-honoured, of Marie de’ Medici, Queen of France. The gallery is surrounded by dense compositions creating a space of conflicting powers and energy: the power of knowledge and understanding that all temples of art perpetuate, but also that of artistic colonialism, of which the Musée du Louvre is the supreme testimonial.
In an atmosphere like this, the expected attitude of the visitor is one of timorous contemplation, and the row of benches in the middle of the gallery seem to suggest this with their inviting welcome.
Nashat brings in an athlete, who first sits on the benches and then, after observing the huge canvases, strips to the waist while singing a natural countermelody to the contrived physicality of Rubens’ bodies. Slowly, and with great concentration, the athlete finds his balance, upside down, first on two hands and then on just one. With his body he creates a single straight line of physical tension, against Rubens’ arabesques. An untamed line that in this gallery asserts itself as an expression of resistance against the authority of history and culture, against all power that is greater than us.