Cloud, mineral, satellite, story: Afield at Skaftfell Center for Visual Art

Cloud, mineral, satellite, story: Afield at Skaftfell Center for Visual Art

Fjær

Cloud, mineral, satellite, story: Afield at Skaftfell Center for Visual Art

Skaftfell’s 2022 summer exhibition Afield (Fjær) is connected to curator Becky Forsythe’s ongoing research-based project that considers land-based practices, materials and themes. The exhibition brings together works by Icelandic and Canadian and American artists, as well as found objects collected in archeological and geological excavations on loan from The National Museum of Iceland and The Icelandic Institute of Natural History. The multidisciplinary curatorial approach tells new stories through art and scientific research. Alongside works by Canadian and American artists Diane Borsato (1973) and Geoffrey Hendricks (1931 – 2018) and Icelandic artist Þorgerður Ólafsdóttir (1985), the exhibition includes minerals collected by the Icelandic photographer Nicoline Weywadt (1848 – 1921) at her family farm in Teigarhorn, in the East Fjords of Iceland, as well as objects excavated from the archaeological dig at Fjörð in Seyðisfjörður, during summer 2020 and 2021. The exhibition is an example of Skaftfell’s importance as a venue for lively artist-led activity and curatorial experimentation. 

The artworks on view by Borsato, Hendricks and Ólafsdóttir, are shown alongside minerals and plastic artifacts found in history and natural history museum collections today. Together they constellate references to the sky, geology, land, and push further into themes of archeological exploration, mineral extraction, taxonomy and classification, and human-led environmental impact. In the exhibition human and environmental ecologies are unearthed in fieldwork, research and performance that in various ways speak to our current position in the Anthropocene.

Installation view. Courtesy of Skaftfell.

Installation view. Courtesy of SkaftfellInstallation view. Courtesy of Skaftfell.

Installation viewInstallation view. Courtesy of Skaftfell.

In A Large Sky for Iceland Geoffrey Hendricks preserves the clouds in the sky. Fleeting and phenomenal, the reference to that which is impermanent invites viewers to look up high and take note of the changes that are happening as quick as clouds, and in doing so, make further connections between the sky and the earth. In his back-to-the-land way and his many interpretations of clouds, Geoffrey’s performances, which often resulted in works like this, incorporated natural materials that, in unison with his body, were a point of reference and closeness to what surrounds us.

Geoffrey Hendricks - A large sky for Iceland

Geoffrey Hendricks - A large sky for IcelandGeoffrey Hendricks, A Large Sky for Iceland, 1984, acrylic and graphite drawing on paper, collection of The Living Art Museum.

In the photograph The Sky Below Seyðisförður, Ólafsdóttir has assembled vibrant blue pottery fragments found at the archaeology dig in Fjörður, in a nod to Hendricks’ paintings of clouds and skies. The pottery fragments were recently unearthed in Seyðisfjörður in an archeological excavation being led by Ragnheiður Traustadóttir’s Antikva project; they are now preserved at the National Museum of Iceland along with other pot shards featured in another photograph, Flowers for Seyðisfjörður. In the assemblage composed of plastic finds entitled Atlas of the Heavens, the found objects are shown against found prints of the heavens as if to evoke a distant place, with the plastic performing as potential satellites in a near-future sky. Not all of the synthetic objects found at Fjörður, arriving from our everyday lives, have been turned precious. Rather, as documented in photographs reproduced as risographs entitled Almost Artifacts, some objects have been discarded again, placed back into the ground. Time Capsules, a work based on photographs of core samples serves as an cyclical archive of time as it disappears.

Þorgerður Ólafsdóttir, Himinkort / Atlas of the Heavens Þorgerður Ólafsdóttir, Himinkort / Atlas of the Heavens, 1950 / 2022, offset print, excavated plastic artifacts (detail). Courtesy of the artist.

Plastic RemainsÞorgerður Ólafsdóttir, Riso print, excavated plastic artifacts (detail). Courtesy of the artist. Documentation by Rannveig Þórhallsdóttir. Discarded plastic remains found in the excavation dig in Fjörður.

Þorgerður ÓlafsdóttirBlóm handa Seyðisfirði / Flowers for Seyðisfjörður and Himinninn undir Seyðisfirði / The Sky below Seyðisfjörður, 2022, photographic work. Courtesy of Skaftfell.

Borsato’s video Gems and Minerals speaks to some of the world’s oldest geological resources: the rocks and minerals found in the Teck Suite: Earth’s Treasures galleries at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto. In the video, museum guides use American Sign Language (ASL) and site-responsive dance to illuminate and focus a critical lens on stories that are not usually told about the social impact of mining and extraction, and of the seductive beauty of the materials we mine. The work asks us to pay close attention to the curiosities found in natural history collections, and to push further to consider their less-impermanent objects to the stories that are told through them — by whom and at what cost? Sometimes with humor, but more often disturbing and complex, the performed stories shed light on questions of personal attachment and reliance, of land theft leading to loss of Indigenous spiritual traditions, and the environmental and economical impacts of mining and resource extraction.

Diane Borsato - Gems and Minerals

Diane Borsato, Gems and Minerals, 2018, video, 25 mín. (video stills). Courtesy of the artist.

Gathered, organized and assembled in response to works by Borsato and Þorgerður, minerals collected by Nicoline Weywadt (1848-1921) demonstrate the human desire to collection and classify. Weywadt, who studied mineralogy in Copenhagen in the 1870s (and, significantly, was Iceland’s first professionally-trained photographers) collected minerals at Teigarhorn, in Dúpavogshreppur, in east Iceland, a mineral-rich area where Schoolite, stilbite, epistilbite, mordenite, laumontite and heulandite, seladonite, opal, chalcedony, rock crystal, calcite and Iceland spar are found. Although the region was declared a natural monument in 1976, for over 200 years the zeolites here were used in various geological studies and, in the 18th century, specimens were sold to museums around the world. 

Taken together, the objects in the exhibition ask the view to consider the many ways we attend to land and its beauty, but also the equally many ways we extract what is precious from it. In Afield, ethereal hand-painted and found skies, collected gems and minerals, performed stories and archeological finds counter notions of decay to become catalysts for memory and the experience of the the passage and suspension in geologic time. By considering human desire and its impact on change in the natural, non-human world, the exhibition asks: how can the ritual of heading out into the environment, newly navigating our relationship to it, move us closer to knowing this changing world?

Becky Forsythe


Afield / Fjær opened on June 4th and is currently on view at Skaftfell Center for Visual Art until September 4th 2022.

The exhibition is curated by Becky Forsythe, with the support of staff at Skaftfell.

For more on the artists and their work:
dianeborsato.net
thorgerdurolafsdottir.info

Skaftfell — myndlistarmiðstöð Austurlands / Center for Visual Art
Austurvegur 42, Seyðisfjörður – www.skaftfell.is

Stars are the flowers of our skies: The Wildflower

Stars are the flowers of our skies: The Wildflower

Stars are the flowers of our skies: The Wildflower

 

in conversation with Becky Forsythe and Penelope Smart

 

In The Wildflower, we’re transported into a disorienting horizon full of flowers, non-flowers, stones, glass and jelly. Bringing together artists and writers from Canada and Iceland, the exhibition questions, uncovers, and challenges various problems and possibilities surrounding nature, land, landscape, and what it means to those who dwell on it. 

As I sink into thoughts about my personal relationship to both the Canadian and Icelandic landscapes, the initial parallels are clear. They both carry postcard-like perceptions of vibrancy. Large, open space, fresh air, and curiosity – from fjords and hot springs in Iceland, to great lakes and tall trees in Canada. They share northern geographies and similar flora. Contemplating the propositions that the show offered brought forward many questions. What is considered an Icelandic landscape, and what is considered a Canadian one? Whose perspectives are given space and whose voices are missing? Where do these stories intersect, and where do they part? 

This conversation with curators Becky Forsythe and Penelope Smart, much like The Wildflower itself, spanned countries, viewpoints, and time(zones). Generously offering a glimpse into their collective vision of the show and beyond, we spoke about traditional craft in contemporary spaces, what inclusion means, notions of past, present and future in landscape, as well as the added labour of distance.

Juliane Foronda: Your shared connection to nature is quite evident. What other interests or curiosities informed this show? 

Becky Forsythe: Themes circulating nature are so vast and varied — and saying The Wildflower is solely grounded in nature only scratches the surface. Our intention was a layered exhibition, and first and foremost one about artists whose works are exciting, re-envision natural material, personal history, or land in new ways. This was sparked by an interest in reimagined craft-based practices as a way to narrow in on familiar, foreign, future landscapes and unfold the layers in those concepts. It is also quite natural for us to work with female artists spanning generations and most definitely emerging into their practices.

Penelope Smart: I think craft based practices have a lot to say to traditional visual art practices in a gallery. They are often connected to domestic skills or “women’s work”, and are now seen as something extremely alive in a contemporary art space. 

BF: Arna weaves, but none are present in the show. She does however weave together preserved flowers in Untitled (2014). Her practice is very conceptual, and I am not sure that she would consider her practice craft-based. But her work stems from a long history of weaving and conceptual fiber sculpture in Iceland with people like Ásgerður Búadóttir (1920-2014), Hildur Hákonardóttir and G.Erla (Guðrún Erla Geirsdóttir), who have opened up the reading of “women’s work” in contemporary art since the fifties, sixties or seventies.

PS: As a curator who loves craft, there’s a powerful point in the idea of permission, responsibility and ownership. Craft can immediately connect you to a community that may or may not be your own, and you may or may not have permission into it. Where I am in northern Ontario, I think there are really generative experiences of how craft is connected to Indigenous communities, traditions, and other histories that you may not be trusted into just because you think it’s interesting. We were thinking about representations of nature in the future, and there is a paradox presenting works that connect to craft practices and traditions. That tension is consciously at play in this show.

BF: This tension in the exhibition plays with work elements that would be identified as craft-based, and how they appear in the artists’ work through other means. For example, Nína’s work, where she embroidered the tablecloth with local flora. This is a skill she acquired as a young woman, and she utilizes her skills, as any artist would, in conceptualizing an installation which is in some ways about the traditional practice of stitching, but reaches beyond that and into an atmosphere of cultural awareness. 

JF: What was your motivation behind fostering this conversation between the Canadian and Icelandic landscapes, and why was this important to you? 

PS: The idea of Iceland and Canada sharing latitudes and plant histories because of their geographies is something we were interested in. The work that was coming out of the studios in each of these places were often related to each other, especially between Newfoundland and Iceland. There’s so much more research that can be done, we’ve just skimmed the surface.

JF: Both Iceland and Canada have strong and specific overarching narratives around what it means to belong to, represent and live on these lands. Many of these narratives surround notions of home, heritage, legacy and access. Are varying perspectives and experiences, such those from the many refugees and immigrants who also inhabit these lands represented in The Wildflower?

PS: I don’t know if all those views are represented. The artists included in the show from Canada and the North are Indigenous, mixed ancestry, or white and/or of European descent, and are drawing from their own experience. I’m okay with someone pointing out that there are people and stories missing from the show, because that’s definitely true and for me, isn’t a reason to feel like the show fails in terms of a show that’s thinking about landscape. If The Wildflower does play a part in bringing up conversations about what’s lacking, where stories are missing about the experience of landscape, or what it means, if anything, to talk about flowers in a northern landscape, that’s great. These conversations are hard, but they’re important.

BF: The view we present is not a universal vision of land or landscape, but an act to deconstruct or counter or address imbalance in contemporary conversations on the topic. The exhibition itself wasn’t so much about transporting the experience of Canada here, or matching it to the experience of Iceland, but about creating a dialogue where questions would arise. Break up out-dated representations, I would say, and present a new potential for landscape. There are experiences that are missing, and that is okay, this is just one open possibility gathered from many voices.

 

Installation view with Jón Gunnar Árnason, Blómið, 1967, The Wildflower, Hafnarborg 2020. Photo: Kristín Pétursdóttir

Asinnajaq, Where you go, I follow, 2020, digital photograph on polysheer. Photo: Kristín Pétursdóttir

Katrina Jane, Tools of Being, 2020, Portuguese marble. Photo Kristín Pétursdóttir

Leisure, Narrative no. 9 (cotton grass, berry hand, summer 1943 on Bonavista Bay and women picking berries on the barrens 1912-15/2016), Narrative no.13, 2017, photo montage and Invisibility Cloaks, 2020, haskap, blueberries and cranberries on canvas. Photo: Vigfús Birgisson

JF: Is nature and/or land(scape) inclusive? 

BF: The way that nature’s been handled is not inclusive. I guess it depends on who is telling the story? Whose nature is it? And who has access? But if you think about this in the environmental or cultural context, then nature has been misused in a way that’s not inclusive at all and has kept certain cultures, genders and races repressed. 

PS: This is such a good question. I do think this comes up in the sense of nature as a resource. And who has access to it. In the exhibit, there’s the idea of nature as a resource related to different histories and in terms of the materials themselves, the view of nature as something that gives or has given, and gives innately, and how we take.

JF: While this collaboration was always planned to have an element of long distance to some capacity, you came across many unexpected challenges due to COVID-19. Can you talk a bit about the obstacles, joys, added labour and findings that came from this?

BF: The long distance nature of our collaboration meant the transition into the reality of COVID-19 just happened. We had worked in a lot of research and preparation that would take place onsite in Iceland, that was affected quite early on and became impossible. We pivoted in this new vulnerability, like colleagues, exhibitions, museums and galleries everywhere are currently doing, and found new approaches. This transformed our selection of work, but also pushed us, in a good way, to reconsider the place of our work in the field.

PS: It’s unfortunate that I wasn’t able to go to Iceland. At times it felt like constantly asking do we cancel this? became the work. But this was happening for everyone. I often felt like I couldn’t do my fair share because I wasn’t physically there. It didn’t change how the show went for me in the end, as it looked exactly how it would have if I had been able to be there. It makes me excited for the next thing we get to do together.

BF: We were lucky that we walked into this with a consistent working practice, weekly meetings and reliable communication. Onsite/online, we weren’t only doing this long distance, but between time zones too. I really see the labour that went into this exhibition as balanced— whether conceptual, physical or intellectual. It was heartbreaking that Penelope couldn’t be here, because we had organized to a certain extent, but also left room to respond together in the space once we were in it, and we really didn’t get to experience that. That’s an exciting part for me to really feel works in the space, get in there and respond. 

JF: (How) will this collaboration exist after this exhibition is over?

BF:  I think we did walk into it with the idea that this project, and at least the beginnings of this research extend into something beyond. Our list of artists, contributors and writers was so huge. We definitely couldn’t include everyone that we wanted to in The Wildflower, and that leaves us with exciting research to continue. The fact that we’ve survived this massive exhibition at this time, long distance – across countries and with COVID, it’s left me really excited to attempt something new. Whether that’s realised as an exhibition or another format, it’s still up in the air. There’s still a lot that we haven’t unpacked and it’s about finding the right time for those things to happen.

PS: The ways that we experience and engage with art are shifting. It’s no longer about getting on a plane to do research and studio visits, and a lot more art is now happening outside of traditional gallery settings. This means that we have to think about how our work as curators can continue to be of value to audiences moving forward. I’m interested and learning how to talk about land, how to belong to it and where I belong, what does belonging actually translate to, how does history play out in a landscape, how do you claim it or not, and how do you revisit yourself in land. I want to be able to work with artists who are looking at these questions.

——————

Following my question about if nature and landscape was inclusive, Penelope posed a series of questions back at me. She asked how inclusivity feels, where it lives in the body, and what emotions are present when we talk about if nature is inclusive. These questions in relation to my personal relationship with land and nature have been circulating in my headspace since being asked, and I will likely continue to sit in the reality of these thoughts for some time.

I immediately thought of my family’s first winter in Canada, and the small toboggan (sled) my parents got us so we could all play in the snow. I thought of the first time I realised I didn’t know how to ice skate or ski like most of the kids at my primary school could, who were predominantly of white settler-colonial descent. I also remembered my first trip to a friend’s cottage in my teens, and how they taught me how to canoe at sunset. My thoughts also fall back to listening to my father tell me stories throughout my childhood about his rural village in the northern region of the Philippines – stories of mango trees, being showered by the warm tropical rain, playing with spiders, stones and banana leaves, and about how bright the stars were at night. This landscape is completely opposite to the one I grew up in and is one that I barely know myself, but I feel inherently connected to it from these stories that have been told and retold to me over the years. I also thought about when I moved to Iceland, and how my body surrendered to the slow pace of the dark winter. I remembered the first time I saw the northern lights, and I can still hear the sound of the strong winter wind whistling through my window. I also often think of that soft pink light that peeks out around February, which breaks the darkness and makes the whole landscape seem to glow in silence for a few moments.

These thoughts and memories led me to realise that experiences with/in nature and landscape often carry multiple markers or milestones that reveal how much you conventionally belong or fit in. This is particularly true for lands where nature and landscape are deeply interwoven into culture and cultural norms, such as in Iceland and Canada. It’s a curious place, where nature mixes with culture and its conventions, making clear that nature often exists as a refuge or pleasure for the systemically privileged, while it is a border or boundary for many others. The very specific narratives placed around land and landscape affects people’s psyche and their sense of belonging. It also brings up the notion of nature as legacy – what you pass down and leave behind. I often wondered why my father’s village feels so emotionally familiar to me, and I’ve come to realise that knowledge and histories can transcend time and physical space through the radical care of sharing one’s skills, experience and stories with others.

In an attempt to answer Penelope’s questions, inclusion and exclusion, for me, lives in the space(s) between my tear ducts and my chest. My lived experiences and the feelings they come with trigger a quickened pulse from my heavy heart, a tickle in my throat, a runny nose, and misty eyes. Nature exists in multitudes, and for me, can bring up feelings of wonder while often being laced with a mix of gratitude, guilt, clarity and confusion. I like to think of my relationship with nature as a private one in a public space; it’s complex, changing and challenging, and it’s the only one of its kind that I’ll ever know. 

This conversation exists in two parts, with the other being on Femme Art Review.

 

The WildflowerVilliblómið, was exhibited at Hafnarborg – Centre of Culture and Fine Art (Hafnarfjörður, IS) between August 29 – November 8 2020.

Artists included: Arna Óttarsdóttir, Asinnajaq, Eggert Pétursson, Emily Critch, Jón Gunnar Árnason, Justine McGrath, Katrina Jane, Nína Óskarsdóttir, Leisure, Thomas Pausz, Rúna Thorkelsdóttir

Curated by Becky Forsythe and Penelope Smart

Becky Forsythe and Penelope Smart met at the Banff Centre for the Arts and Creativity in 2017. Their shared work is based in new and meaningful conversations about nature, materials and the feminine. The Wildflower is their first collaborative project.

Becky Forsythe is a curator, writer, and organizer in Reykjavík, Iceland. Penelope Smart is curator at Thunder Bay Art Gallery and writer based in Ontario, Canada. 

Writer’s note of Land Acknowledgement: 

For thousands of years, Tkaronto (Toronto) has been the traditional territory of many nations including the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishinaabeg, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee and the Wendat, and it is still home to many diverse First Nations, Inuit and Métis from across Turtle Island (North America). Tkaronto is covered by Treaty 13 with the Mississaugas of the Credit. I have lived on this land for the majority of my life, and it continues to significantly shape and impact my trajectory. I acknowledge and recognize the many privileges that I have because of immigrating to and having grown up on stolen land. I conducted this interview from Glasgow, Scotland, where I am currently based. 

Penelope spoke to me from Thunder Bay, Ontario, located on the traditional territory of the Anishinaabeg, which is covered by the Robinson-Superior Treaty. She is grateful to live and work on the traditional territory of Fort William First Nation. Becky spoke to me from Reykjavík, Iceland. She acknowledges traditional territories of the Huron-Wendat, the Haudenosaunee, the Anishinaabeg, specifically Ojibway/Chippewa, the Odawa and Wahta Mohawk peoples whose presence on the land continues to this day, and where her time and experiences lived on this land continue to influence her person and practice. 

Femme Art Review is based out of the traditional territory of the Anishinaabek, Haudenosaunee, Lūnaapéewak, and Attawandaron peoples (London, Ontario). Artzine is based out of Reykjavík, Iceland.

 

 

Cover picture: Nína Óskarsdóttir, The Feast (Veislan), 2020, mixed media, table cloth embroidered with Icelandic wildflowers and assorted beer jellies. Photo: Kristín Pétursdóttir

The Scale of It All

The Scale of It All

The Scale of It All

From screensaver screenshots taken in 2007 by Katrín Agnes Klar to pen plotter drawings on engravings from Baroque 1730 publications by Lukas Kindermann in 2018, Distant Matter, now on view at The Living Art Museum, takes that which is remote and brings it under close inspection.

The artists’ first exhibition together on this scale since meeting at the Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design/ZKM ten years ago is vast in its breadth of subject matter and material discourse. It is seemingly difficult to break into, as though your body were being asked to negotiate between the vast scales and ratios having a dialogue within the space. Am I infinitely small or infinitely large? Does that meteorite (1:1, 2016, Lukas Kindermann), 3D printed based on data gathered from NASA and lying on the floor, exist just as much in this exhibition as it does on Mars? Does a 3D print make the object a hyper-real version of itself, etched layer by layer out of silica sand and epoxy resin? Am I the distant matter at hand or does that moniker belong to these objects in quiet conversation?

The conversation seemingly concerns the history of tools used in measuring the great distances between things such as the entire sky as in Lukas’ Atlas, 2018, in which an original copy of a photographic atlas stellarium by Hans Vehenberg is placed on a wooden platform. The viewer looks down into an inverted sky graphed into measurable squares which are scattered with both the originals of fossils, meteorites and roman shards as well as 3D printed carbon-silica sand and PLA replications. The conversation also concerns the small distances between things, as in the domestic and the everyday, as in the wallpapering table on which Katrín’s gradients of color are UV printed that could just as well be in your living room.

When placed side by side, these two vast scales at work allow the exhibition space to breathe – both in long inhalations and in short gasps – the body’s sense of scale likewise tries to keep up while the distant and the conjunct play in reciprocal motions, back and forth (like the movement of pen plotters, 3D printer arms, and the light beam from an image scanner creating a digital version of what once was held in your hands.)

The quote about quantum physics that is all too easily misunderstood in layman’s terms comes to mind while walking around the space. It goes something like this: you are an observer located at a single point in space-time, an event. The singularity principle also comes to mind, something about how equations that diverge towards infinity are afterward completely unknown to us.

The exhibition can take you through a crash course in these ideas but leave you feeling very human in the end, returned to the land, so to speak, like the meteorite itself brought you back, even if as a 3D print – which will have to do, since that appears to be the direction of things as 3D printing technology infiltrates our biology, building prosthetics and completely collapsing the staggering Old World equation of measuring costs in material, time, and energy on a human scale. The exhibition can take you to these places, yet leave you, rather singularly, with a body of resources and tools to extend the senses into vast distances to be mapped, like tossing a rock into a well and listening to the echo to get an idea of the depth and fullness.

In conversation with Katrín, I am told that she and Lukas have always had a conceptual approach:

“The art movements of the 1960s and early ‘70s like Land Art and Minimal Art have been an influence on both of our work, just as much as a Pop point of view. Perhaps symptomatic of the times we are in, I would say young artists have a wide-ranging frame of reference. Essential for both of us, though, is the fundamental concern in creating good images. Creating an image has such a universal meaning and is so deep in global history, but everyone connects to it at the same time.”

While seemingly a simple and straightforward concern, in the making of good images one can look at many overlapping cultural and scientific histories to see the depth at which one can travel in search for how to go about this activity. What makes it so difficult? Are there too many demands on the image in the 21st century or not enough? Consider: Is it aesthetically pleasing, in good resolution, conducive to the surroundings, making the best use of the technology that made it? “I grew up with an Icelandic art history background so the strong tradition of the influence of the landscape on the viewer has always been present. In all of my works,” Katrín says, “ I am imitating nature.” Perhaps that is the only real standard by which to judge a good image.

Katrín has worked before with the poster medium, one of many everyday objects she often includes in her work. On one whole wall of the exhibition space, a grid of posters called Blue Gradient (taken from airplane), 2018, is wallpapered to site-specific dimensions. The photo, indeed taken from the window of an airplane, shows a gradient stretching from dark blue sky to white horizon line. “Vice versa to the imitation of nature with computer-based tools,” Katrín says, “I simulate digital effects with material captured in nature, with photographs of the sky.” The photo is turned sideways so that the white horizon lines now touch other white horizon lines and are transformed into a wall of roving light photo scanners, giving the sensation that the whole room is in the process of being copied, digitized, turned into pixels, tossed into outer space and returned to something we can understand here in this room, like an everyday affair (like the cloud our phones and computers send data to, an everyday reality, so abstract yet mundane at this point.)

Works with UV printing, very common in advertising, are together with other techniques adapted from that field, definitely part of her ‘everyday’ oeuvre. However, unlike in advertisement, her images are based on a conceptual use of color. Boundary Colors (2015) is based on the color theories of Goethe who observed colors on the borders of darkness, which Katrín tells me, is, of course, sunrise and sunset. The piece in question is a lenticular image, meaning it changes depending on the angle from which it is viewed, displaying an almost time-lapse painting display of colors corresponding to those edges of darkness.

“A lot of these works are process-based, and because of the nature of the long-distance atmosphere, many of the final curatorial decisions were made on site,” added curator, Becky Forsythe. “There was this flexibility, from beginning to end, which is the way I like to approach exhibition making.” This open flexibility practically bleeds into the horizon, making distant matter an object on the table, observable from an airplane window or through your mobile phone, stretching across vast distances that could also be seen as quite minuscule. Formal elements connect the space through color gradients, scales, and patterns, like the structural layers creating a 3D print which build upon the other, making the intangible tangible. The space breathes, despite the large number of works in the room; perhaps it is the abundance of gradients of colors, allowing everything to exist on its own scale.

Erin Honeycutt


Distant Matter at The Living Art Museum by Katrín Agnes Klar and Lukas Kindermann. Curated by Becky Forsythe

Exhibition duration: 19.01.18 – 11.03.18

Photos: Vigfús Birgisson

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