Gjöfin til íslenzkrar alþýðu

by Grétar Þór Sigurðsson | Fimmtudagur.07.2019 | Umfjöllun

Gjöfin til íslenzkrar alþýðu

„Menn vita ekki að þróun listgreina í landinu er meira og minna einum manni að þakka. Manni sem eitt sinn átti sér draum og nú er að rætast að fullu. Manni sem heitir Ragnar Jónsson og kenndur er við Smjörlíkisgerðina Smára.“

Svo mælti Kristján Davíðsson um vin sinn og bakhjarl Ragnar Jónsson í viðtali við Ingólf Margeirsson sem birtist í bók Ingólfs um Ragnar árið 1982. Þetta eru orð að sönnu enda markaði Ragnar djúp spor í menningarlífinu á liðinni öld. Hann átti þátt í því að lyfta tónlistarlífinu í Reykjavík upp á annað plan, hann gaf út bækur af miklum móð og svo keypti hann myndir af listamönnum, bæði af sýningum og beint af vinnustofum þeirra. Flest áhugafólk um myndlist þekkir ef til vill til gjafar Ragnars á listaverkum sínum til Alþýðusambands Íslands. Eftir rúmlega þriggja áratuga söfnun gaf Ragnar ASÍ um 120 verk sem skyldu verða grunnur að alþýðusafni sem hefði þann tilgang að mennta íslenska alþýðu í málaralist.

Stóran hluta af stofngjöf Ragnars má skoða á sýningunni Gjöfin til íslenzkrar alþýðu sem er samstarfsverkefni Listasafns Árnesinga og Listasafns ASÍ, en sýningarstjóri er Kristín G. Guðnadóttir. Þrír salir safnsins (af fjórum) fara undir sýninguna auk þess sem þrjú verk eru í miðlægu aðalrými safnsins. Á sýningunni eru alls 52 verk eftir fimmtán listamenn til sýnis, það elsta frá 1906 en yngstu verkin er frá um 1960.

Verkin í hverjum sal fyrir sig fylgja lauslega skilgreindu þema. Þannig eru verkin í fyrsta salnum að mestu leyti landslagsverk, verkin í öðrum salnum mannamyndir og verkin í þriðja salnum eiga það sammerkt að vera tjáningarrík verk „þar sem áherslan er lögð á upplausn formsins og sprengikraft litanna,“ líkt og segir í sýningarskrá. Í aðalrýminu má svo finna tvær blómauppstillingar og stórt olíuverk Kjarvals, Hellisheiði.

Uppsetning sýningarinnar er að mestu í takt við verkin, sígild. Málverkunum er raðað eftir miðlínu á hvíta veggi, sem er viðbúið. Á sýningunni má samt sem áður finna áhugaverðar undantekningar á þessari reglu. Útfærslan á mannamyndunum í sal tvö er gott dæmi um slíka undantekningu. Á rauðum endavegg má finna sjálfsmyndir fimm listamanna og á aðliggjandi vegg vinstra megin má finna tvær portrett myndir af listamönnum sem eiga verk á sýningunni, þeim Þorvaldi Skúlasyni og Nínu Tryggvadóttur. Gegnt Nínu og Þorvaldi er svo mynd af Ragnari sjálfum á hvítum vegg, máluð af Jóhannesi Kjarval. Með þessari uppsetningu og litavali tekst sýningarstjóranum vel að hópa listamennina saman, en miðlínu er sleppt og neðri hluti hvers ramma stendur á sameiginlegri línu. Listamennirnir eru þar með allir á sama stalli. Ragnar stendur þannig fyrir utan hópinn auk þess sem mynd hans hangir er látin hanga ögn hærra á veggnum sem undirstrikar hlutverk hans sem velgjörðarmanns.

Sá listamaður sem átti flest verk í safni Ragnars var Jón Stefánsson.

Mannamyndir voru mikilvægur hluti af safni Ragnars.

Það má þó deila um þá ákvörðun að láta Ragnar hanga hærra uppi heldur en listamennina sjálfa. Við lestur á því sem skrifað hefur verið um persónu Ragnars má skilja það sem svo að hann hafi verið yfirlætislaus maður og seint viljað trana sér fram. Því til stuðnings verður hér aftur vísað til spjalls þeirra Ingólfs Margeirssonar og Kristjáns Davíðssonar, en Kristján kemst svo að orði um Ragnar: „[H]ann vill láta verk sín líta út sem sjálfsagaða hluti þar sem nafn hans kemur hvergi fram. Hann vill vera, en ekki sýnast eða sjást.“ Í þessu samhengi má auk þess minnast sögunnar af því þegar afhending stofngjafarinnar fór fram í Listamannaskálanum samhliða opnun sýningar á stórum hluta gjafarinnar. Mikill fjöldi tiginna gesta var viðstaddur, en í hópnum var Ragnar hvergi að finna, heldur færði Tómas Guðmundsson ASÍ verkin formlega fyrir Ragnars hönd. Það má því færa rök fyrir því að Ragnar hefði sjálfur kosið gegn því að vera settur ofar listamönnunum.

Aðra undantekningu á miðlínu og hvítum veggjum má finna í sal þrjú. Á dökkgráum vegg sem blasir við gestum þegar þeir ganga inn í salinn hanga tólf abstrakt verk sex listamanna í salon upphengi. Veggurinn brýtur rýmið upp á hrífandi hátt og útfærslan virkar vel. Sýningargestir taka kannski fyrst eftir því í sal þrjú að verk einstakra listamanna eru ekki sérstaklega látin hanga hlið við hlið og strangri tímaröð er ekki heldur fylgt. En það sem mestu máli skiptir er það að uppsetning sýningarinnar er fyrst og fremst rökrétt – þau verk sem valin eru til þess að hanga hlið við hlið virka saman.

Á sýningunni er auðvelt að nálgast upplýsingar um nafn listaverks, höfund og ártal og við hlið margra þeirra má auk þess finna stutta texta. Kjarni þessara texta eru tilvitnanir í listamenn, Ragnar sjálfan eða í bækur Björns Th. Björnssonar um íslenska listasögu og eru textarnir skemmtileg viðbót við sýninguna. Prentun textanna og merkinganna hefði þó mátt vera betri, svo virðist sem prentað hafi verið á hálfglæra miða sem límdir eru beint á vegginn. Fyrir vikið varð textinn ekki jafn læsilegur og sambærilegir textar sem prentaðir eru á hvít spjöld. Þá vantaði töluvert upp á yfirlestur textanna sjálfra og í þeim mátti finna nokkrar villur.

Samhliða sýningunni kom út vegleg bók um stofngjöf Ragnars. Í henni má finna myndir af öllum verkunum sem Ragnar færði ASÍ, bæði stofngjöfina frá árinu 1961, sem telur um 120 verk, og svo síðari viðbætur. Í heildina færði Ragnar ASÍ 147 verk. Auk myndanna má finna í bókinni fínan texta sem Kristín G. Guðnadóttir sýningarstjóri tók saman.

Það er vafalaust krefjandi verkefni að setja upp sýningu á verkum úr safneign eins manns. Sýningin getur, eðli málsins samkvæmt, ekki gefið sannfærandi mynd af þróun íslenskrar listasögu né verið greinargóð úttekt á tilteknu skeiði þess. Þegar öllu er á botninn hvolft er það smekkur eins manns sem liggur til grundvallar. Sýningarstjóranum vill það til happs að sá maður var Ragnar Jónsson í Smára og sýningunni tekst þar af leiðandi að gera þróun íslenskrar myndlistar skil að einhverju leyti.

Sýningin er athyglisverðari en aðrar áþekkar sýningar einmitt fyrir þær sakir að þetta eru einvörðungu verk úr stofngjöf Ragnars. Mörg verka sýningarinnar eru áhugafólki um myndlist að góðu kunn, en þó líklega flest úr bókum. Sum verkin hafa meira að segja öðlast allt að því rokkstjörnufrægð, besta dæmið um það er Fjallamjólk Kjarvals. Enn önnur verk verðskulda að vera þekktari en raun ber vitni. Ragnar lagði þung lóð á vogarskálarnar í listkynningu með því að færa alþýðufólki sum þessara verka, sem og önnur þekkt íslensk málverk, í formi endurprentana. Það er þó tvennt ólíkt að standa frammi fyrir endurprentun af málverki og málverkinu sjálfu. Það er því fagnaðarefni að sýning sem þessi hafi verið sett upp, sýning sem gefur áhugasömum innlit í merkilega gjöf Ragnars Jónssonar í Smára til íslenskrar alþýðu.

Grétar Þór Sigurðsson

Sýningin stendur til 15. september, en Listasafn Árnesinga er opið alla daga frá 12 til 18. Þess ber að geta að ekkert kostar inn á safnið.

Arctic Art Summit 2019: The Arctic as a laboratory for sustainable art and cultural policy

by Ana Victoria Bruno | Sunnudagur.07.2019 | artzine in english

Arctic Art Summit 2019: The Arctic as a laboratory for sustainable art and cultural policy

The Arctic Art Summit is a biennial event established in 2017 which brings together art professionals, academics, artists, and those involved in the cultural field from Arctic countries to discuss shared challenges and to both encourage and support the establishment of circumpolar collaborations. The Summit was created to strengthen the art community in the north of the world, to focus on local art and to create infrastructures and opportunities for the nordic art to develop. This second edition was held in Rovaniemi, Finland, the capital of Lapland and homeland to the indigenous Sámi people, with conversations centered on the theme The Arctic as a laboratory for sustainable art and cultural policy. The event stretched over three days with conferences, discussions, exhibition openings, and artistic event where Arctic art and artists were protagonists.

The characteristics of arctic countries such as isolation, extreme weather, small communities do not affect the quality of art production, on the contrary art in these countries has maintained throughout the years certain specificities related to the particular history of those populations, characteristic which make it highly valuable. It is hard to define what arctic art is, to whom or what the term applies and how strict this definition should be, however we can assume that arctic art generally addresses indigenous and non-indigenous cultures in the nordic region. Thanks to their similar characteristics and histories, the arctic countries constitute the perfect ground for arctic artists to share their works, and for communities to establish horizontal orientated bonds which would disrupt the north-south movement of art. Creating microcenters outside of the traditional international art routes would counter the conglomeration of art in the big European or American capitals.

In a thoughtful speech, Dieter K. Müller, professor in Human Geography at the Umeå University, Sweden, highlighted that the arctic circle is “moving south”: more and more countries want to identify themselves as part of the Arctic region because that denomination would make them look more attractive to tourists’ eyes; “the Arctic is hot, in many senses” he said. The Arctic is hot because it represents the promise of adventures, stunning landscape, and exotic populations, therefore tourism has been on the rise in this part of the world during the last decade. Global warming is affecting the North faster than other parts of the world, the Arctic is literally hot and environmentalists look at what is happening up here in order to predict the trajectory of climate change throughout the world.

Dieter K. Müller giving a speech on the second day of the Arctic Art Summit. Photo credit: Kaisa-Reetta Seppänen.

Müller expressed his concerns that this interest in the Nordic countries from the rest of the world might instill misrepresentation of those countries’ identities: Arctic populations need to define themselves by themselves, their image shouldn’t be shaped by the rest of the world. These beautiful lands so attractive to tourists are in fact inhabited by people, sometimes indigenous people, and instead of stereotyping them to attract more tourists we should learn from them, and leave them free to define themselves and to share their understanding of the lands they have engaged with for generations.

In the publication What is the imagined North? presented during the last edition of the Arctic Art Summit in Harstad, Norway, author Daniel Chartier, professor at the Université du Québec à Montréal, Canada, wrote that there are two visions of The North: the one from the outside, the representation of not-Nordic people, who arrived one hundred years ago, but have been imagining The North for many hundreds of years, and the one from the inside, the actual culture of the Arctic, which stems from the indigenous or native populations’ understanding of their lives in these lands, a knowledge passed through generations of inhabitants, shaped through years of living there and adapting their lives to the geography and environment. The indigenous framing, experience and definition of landscape and the Arctic has long been ignored by colonial history, and as such the idea of an uninhabitable Arctic took hold. The colonial voice dominated.

The management of cultural institutions and museums which gives more space to internationally recognised curators was raised as a concern by Müller, the implication of this is that they are more skilled and capable of representation in major institutions then local practitioners. Müller highlighted that it is fundamental to value local art professionals and to develop a stronger awareness of local culture and art, focussing effort on studying and researching them, to provide artists’ with platforms and opportunities to show their work. The main goal should be to reach a balance for local and international professionals who both have something to offer and the reciprocal benefit that can manifest. Cultural products from both sectors should be presented on the same level, to pursue post-colonialist values and restore a balance of power between dominant and marginalised communities.

Panel discussion Sustainability through Art and Culture in the Arctic. From left to right: Tuuli Ojala, Jan Borm, Gunvor Guttorm, Daniel Chartier. Photo credit: Janne Jakola.

2019 is the United Nations’ year of indigenous languages, this was acknowledged by Arctic Art Summit through giving prominence and focus on indigenous art, culture and language. Recurrent conversations asserted the importance and understanding indigenous language in order to understand indigenous art and culture. Gunvor Guttorn, professor in Duodji (Sámi arts and crafts, traditional art, applied art) at the Sámi University College in Guovdageaidnu/Kautokeino, Norway, highlighted the importance of keeping Sámi languages alive since they are key to understand the development of Sámi culture for they are strongly intertwined with the history and lifestyle of these communities. The Sámi University College, in facts, offers education in Sami languages, providing Sami people with the opportunity to be educated in their own language, a right of which everyone should be entitled. Tiina Sanila-Aiko, president of the Sámi Parliament of Finland, emphasised the importance of indigenous languages by giving a speech in Sámi language, an interesting experience for those in the public who didn’t speak the language, the particular sound of Sami words did however unveil certain characteristics of the culture itself. She stressed that language constitutes a mirror of a culture, it reveals the philosophy of existence, the values, and the perception of things. Language is a powerful tool giving insight into a culture, and for too much time indigenous’ languages have not been heard. At this year’s Summit, David Chartier empathized that “we have to preserve languages for ecological reasons, if we lose languages we lose ideas”. He explained that we are all connected within the world, and ecology is not just about nature and environment, but it is also about preserving humans’ cultural heritage. We need an ecology of the real, which takes into account everything existing around us.

Panel discussion Decolonizing Research Practices. Speakers: Krista Ulujuk Zawadski, Charissa von Harringa, Pia Lindman . Moderator: Heather Igloliorte. Photo credit: Kaisa-Reetta Seppänen.

Panel discussion Duodji in Contemporary Context. From left to right: Irene Snarby, Duojár Katarina Spiik Skum, Svein Aamold, Gunvor Guttorm, Anniina Turunen. Photo credit: Janne Jakola.

People from different Arctic indigenous communities and people from dedicated art and cultural institutions which support indigenous’ art and culture took part to the summit, discussing the situation of the communities they work with and sharing how they operate with respect to indigenous communities, raising consciousness and discussing better ways to valorise indigenous art and promote an understanding of it from inside the community, avoiding displaying such works from a western standpoint, as mere exotic object. Indigenous’ art requires specialized engagement, and at the same time it’s important to open these dialogues to the world and placing them in conversation with mainstream art. Such works demand a presence global art community and to be engaged with at an international level.

The situation of indigenous art is delicate, in fact in order to understand and connect with their art one needs to be familiar with their culture and the way they live, indigenous art is often inseparable from indigenous people’s lives, their art is often expressed through objects used in everyday life, art research and functionality are often combined. Therefore, indigenous people should be included and consulted when art from their communities is the subject. Indigenous art professionals exist, and art institutions who wish to work with objects from indigenous communities need to have members from that specific communities operating on all levels of the institution. This falls within the process of de-colonisation, a hot topic in every cultural and non-cultural sector. Giving opportunity to those who had been deprived of any kind of powership over their own land, culture, image, of taking back their histories and validating their specialised knowledge and skills is important to re-establishing a balance between powers in the world.

The Arctic Art Summit left everyone with a positive feeling for the future of the Arctic. Thoughtful conversations, inspiring speeches, and insights into institutions who are really making a difference though their work with and for indigenous communities’ cultures, left participants of the summit hopeful that a future based on respect, understanding, and inclusivity can and will exist and that the research of and engagement with marginalised cultures will keep them alive.

Ana Victoria Bruno

Sámi band Soljio playing on the last evening of the Arctic Art Summit. Photo credit: Janne Jakola

Arctic Art Summit website: https://www.ulapland.fi/EN/Events/Arctic-Arts-Summit-2019

Cover picture: installation view of the show Fringe at Galleria Valo, Arktikum. The exhibition focused on art and crafts from the Arctic periphery runs from June 4 – August 11, 2019. Photo credit: Kaisa-Reetta Seppänen.

A Mirrored Detritus and the Camouflaged Body : B. Ingrid Olson at i8 Gallery

by Daría Sól Andrews | Þriðjudagur.07.2019 | artzine in english, Viðtöl

A Mirrored Detritus and the Camouflaged Body : B. Ingrid Olson at i8 Gallery

I8 recently added B. Ingrid Olson (b.1987) to their roster of represented artists, a Chicago based artist whose intriguing practice can be placed somewhat ambiguously along an undefined axis of photography and sculpture. Olson´s exhibition at i8, Fingered Eyed, her first solo exhibition in Iceland, is compelling in its refined execution. Each of Olson´s pieces are intricately woven in a subtly connected thematic, bordering a limbo between a raw sterility that is contrasted by the warm, fleshy presence of the human body. Fingered Eyed is stark and directed, with a unique precision of vision that is wholly satisfying.

This exhibition works with an open and permeable vocabulary of sculpture, photography, a theatrical staging, and a focused detail on physical material. As Olson essentializes, a “bodily image contained by spatial cavities, or concavities.” At first glance, her sculptural photographs suggest something like papier mache, digitally distorted after the fact, the compositions so complex and confused. In fact, the meticulous moments are staged by the hand of the artist, captured at the blink of an eye, or rather at the close of a camera shutter. Crafted with a precise calculation, each photograph contains a different aim, a different intuition of gesture as she expands and contracts the body and its mirrored proximities.

Installation view Fingered Eyed at i8 Gallery.

Olson unpacks the process for me: “the work that appears to be primarily sculptural comes out of a series of forms that are actually designed to create images by way of light and shadow cast over the protruding edges and inward curving surfaces. Overhead lighting works on their structure to relay a shadow-image of a minimal, absent body. Though these works are not at all photographic technically, their relationship to light (both artificial and natural sunlight) does function as a parallel metaphor for photography, which at its root is described as ‘drawing with light’. And conversely, the works that can be easily referred to as photographic are also equally sculptural in their activity, structure, and presence. The pictures capture performative sculpting of the body and space, with handmade props or found objects that work to camouflage or conflate the figure with its surrounding space. The printed images are then again bridged into the sculptural by way of their deep Plexiglas frames that extend far into their frontal airspace, forming a simultaneous barrier and open container.”

These photographic objects (plexiglass, dye sublimation print on aluminum, MDF) extend out from the wall, surgical yellow, pasty tones interrupting the sterile gallery space. She calls these three works ‘blinders’, working with an analogous relationship to interior architectural space. “The deep sides become wall-like, in that they cordon off the recessed image from full view when approached from an oblique angle. They put limitations on the completeness of vision and dictate how much and when the framed image can possibly be seen. The frames work to orient the viewer towards full-frontal, conscious looking.” It is only when we come to face the object that we encounter the work within. Because of their physical walls, we cannot fully experience the sculptural forms unless facing them head on, entering them, almost. It is in this that Olson allows us to be alone with the piece, carving out a space from which a work and an experience emerges from within the depths of an empty wall. An object, out of moment, for us to privately revel in.

Installation view Fingered Eyed at i8 Gallery.

The body is present throughout. Olson hides her face, but it is present. As she explains, “the body as ‘malleable construction’ has givens, but they can be adapted, changed, and altered. I think this quality of the lived-body is related to lived-architecture, in that there is the initial design of the space, versus the eventual built building that succumbs to time and changing circumstances. Bodies and buildings both need consistent upkeep and adaptation in order to fill certain changing roles, or needs. There is the given nature of things in the beginning—and then there is manipulated, altered, embodied experience.”

A finger over the lens. Mirrors smudged by bodily interaction. An oddly covered female crotch. Smaller sculptures dispersed along the floor and walls reference to knees, holes, body rolls, hips. A loose sculptural representation of an eye, also just barely noticeable in a photograph, imprints of kneeling, a place where two feet might once have stood. The gallery space is physically marked and molded by the body, the image taking a tactile form.

Each photograph, sculpture, and malleable form informs the other, Olson explains, in their difference in speed. “Images work with immediacy, quickly on the eye, whereas sculptural objects are much slower. The photographic images have a sense of simultaneous time inherent to them, inviting a mental jump to a past time and place. The sculptures are (questionably) ever-present, existing as objects to be encountered by the body, in the here-and-now. It is my hope that the sculptural will slow the photographic, and the photographic pieces will prod the sculptural components, causing them to shiver a bit.”

In the smaller sculpture works, the corporeal nature of craftlike fabrics, the delicateness of the cloth, for example, draws out a physical moment from the image. One sculpture is made out of light reflective paper, which she uses in her images as well to create shapes and distortion over her body. The photographic method is then brought out into an embodied form, into physical space, for us to engage and respond to.

When I ask B Ingrid from where she draws artistic influence, she tells me that she tries to “spend time with and approach things or ideas that I strongly dislike. Repulsion or anger is the opposite of attraction and affinity, so it only seems natural to try to find a point of entry into the uncomfortable or the unwanted so they can inform their opposites in some way, or at the very least so they create some itchiness by way of their difference.” And in fact, the harshness of this reflective paper, harnessing a sterile and extreme light, invokes a very specific and familiar feeling in the viewer. It is an uneasy feeling, an itchiness even, and we don’t quite know why. A prosthetic, surgical quality, invokes the naked, gritty, harsh lights of a hospital. Uncomfortably sickly tones and artificial body parts create a corporal form out of something mechanical. A shrine of the body, mixing physical and artificial, plastic and organic, natural and constructed. In this uneasiness we become distinctly aware of our own bodies, whether they are not quite surely still whole, amidst this chopping of others.

Installation view Fingered Eyed at i8 Gallery.

In closing, I notice that a quarter of sales from an offset print in the exhibition will be donated to the American Civil Liberties Union and to Stígamót Education and Counseling Center for Survivors of Sexual Abuse and Violence in Iceland. Perhaps this is part of the derived implication, in Olson’s focus on the body and the unwanted, that our bodies are threatened, of not being sacred, ravaged, torn apart, manipulated. An extra layer for private reflection is unveiled, a space for us to consider a safe place for our bodies, where we revel in their beauty, uninterrupted.

Olson’s aim from this exhibition? Put simply, “to slow an image down, to create, in its ideal outcome, an image that will contain multiple readings, or entry points—to make an image that will only reveal itself fully over a longer period of time.” And successfully achieved, in intriguing fashion.

Daría Sól Andrews

Fingered Eyed is on view at i8 Gallery until August 10th, 2019.

Cover photo: B. Ingrid Olson, Eye, Camera, Body, Room, (Horizontal), 2019.

Photo credits: Vigfús Birgirsson

Photographs courtesy of i8 Gallery.

Artist’s website: http://bingridolson.com

i8 Gallery: https://i8.is

Hildur Ása Henrýsdóttir í Kaktus: „Ég á um 1200 vini á Facebook“

by Drengurinn fengurinn | Þriðjudagur.07.2019 | Viðtöl

Hildur Ása Henrýsdóttir í Kaktus: „Ég á um 1200 vini á Facebook“

Ókei næs! Ég fór á frábæra sýningu í sýningarrýminu Kaktus á Akureyri um daginn. Hún heitir Með böggum Hildar og er nýjasta einkasýning Hildar Ásu Henrýsdóttur. Ég spurði Hildi hvort að ég mætti taka við hana viðtal og hún var heldur betur til í það!

Finnst þér gaman að vera á Akureyri?

Jááá. Það er alltaf mjög næs að vera gestur á Akureyri.

Áttirðu heima á Akureyri?

Já. Ég átti heima hérna í sjö ár. Var hér í menntaskóla, myndlistaskóla og Háskóla.

Fannst þér það gaman?

Já og nei. Stundum var það ekki gaman og stundum var það mjög gaman. Það var ekki gaman þegar eiginlega allir vinir mínir voru fluttir til útlanda eða Reykjavíkur eftir menntaskóla.

Hvað áttu marga vini?

Á maður að nota Facebook til að mæla eða fylgjendur á Instagram? Ég á um 1200 vini á Facebook. Ég held að það sé samt ekki að marka. Einhver sagði að maður gæti þekkt í mesta lagi hundrað manns eða eitthvað.

Finnst þér gaman að vera listamaður?

Já, mér finnst það best. Það besta sem ég hef gert.

Afhverju finnst þér gaman að vera listamaður?

Mér finnst það bara vera eitthvað svo náttúrulegt. Mér finnst ég ekki komast hjá því. Mér finnst þetta meika sens eins og að borða mat og kúka honum.

Flott verk hjá Hildi!

Hvað eru mörg verk á þessari sýningu?

Ég er með 11 verk. Og svo er ég með hálsverk.

Hehe. Ertu stundum með verk í sálinni? Inni í þér?

Já, inni í mér og út úr mér líka. Af því að þegar manni er svona illt inni í sér þá umkringir sársaukinn mann. Gegnsýrir mann algjörlega. Mér líður oft þannig.

Trúir þú á ást við fyrstu sýn?

Já.

Hvað ætlarðu að gera næst í lífinu?

Ég ætla að leggja land undir fót og þreyfa fyrir mér í Berlín og athuga hvort að ég geti listast þar eins og heima.

Hvort finnst þér skemmtilegra á Akureyri eða í Berlín?

Þarf ég að svara?

Nei. Ertu búin að fara í ísbúðina sem er hérna við hliðina á galleríinu?

Já, ég fékk mér avakadósamloku.

Var hún góð?

Já.

Var hún vegan?

Eiginlega ekki.

Ertu búin að smakka vegan Magnum ísinn?

Nei.

Ég fékk mér vegan Magnum ís í fyrradag og aftur í dag og núna líður mér illa í líkamanum eftir að hafa innbyrgt svona mikinn sykur. Og í sálinni líka.

Hvað er þetta brúna í bolnum þínum?

Ís

Árans.

Það fór ís í bolinn.

Fórstu í skrúðgöngu 17. júní?

Nei ég nennti því ekki. Mig langaði samt að fara í andlitsmálun og fá kisuveiðihár.

Hvort finnst þér skemmtilegra á 17. júní eða 1. maí?

Mér finnst hvorugt skemmtilegt. Mér finnst alltaf vera of mikið af fólki og þá langar mig bara að fara heim að borða súkkulaði.

Takk fyrir viðtalið. Þú ert mjög góð í að tala svona.

Takk. Mér finnst ég oft bara segja einhverja vitleysu og vera hálffeimin. En takk fyrir að koma i heimsókn á sýninguna mína og tala við mig. Það er alltaf gaman ef einhver vill koma og tala við mann.

Takk sömuleiðis. Ókei bæ

Ókei bæ

Drengurinn fengurinn

Confronting Surfaces

by Nanna Vibe Spejlborg Juelsbo | Föstudagur.07.2019 | artzine in english

Confronting Surfaces

A bright colored tracksuit hanging from the ceiling is slowly turning as if an invisible air stream were spinning it around. When moving closer to the work I realise that the tracksuit’s print is an actual print of the tracksuit itself laying flat on a wooden floor. A meta-view of a tracksuit. A fashion garment staged as an art piece. This work, together with others, is a part of a new exhibition at Skaftfell Art Center in Seyðisfjörður which brings together works by American visual artist Cheryl Donegan (1962) and Swiss visual artist Dieter Roth (1930-1998).

The exhibition was curated by the director of Skaftfell, Gavin Morrison, who saw a resonance between Roth’s works and Donegan’s contemporary printing methods. A resonance especially apparent in Dieter Roth’s later years which he mostly spent in Seyðisfjörður producing innumerable prints, drawings and books.

When asked, Morrison explains he finds that both artists through experimenting with content and printing techniques engage in self-reflected conversations on the aspect of printing and publishing as a strategy of art.

Donegan‘s fabric pieces are exhibited hanging from the walls and from the ceiling and laying on tables, in-between table displays showing Roth’s books and sketches. In fact, the exhibition consists in full of Donegan’s three tracksuits, four wall pieces made by dyed fabric, one large wall banner which stretches out onto the floor, one video work and three textile works bound together as books. All of Donegan’s works are interwoven with six tables displaying Roth’s heterogeneous works such as books, prints, notes, drawings, diary entries and nine pixelated newspaper cut-outs on a wall.

Cheryl Donegan, Banner (Light Blue Gingham), 2014-ongoing. Photograph: Mary Buckland/Skaftfell

On one of June’s last days I called Cheryl Donegan. She was back in her home in New York after having visited Iceland and Seyðisfjörður to set up the exhibition at Skaftfell. To begin the conversation, I asked her to introduce us to her practise.

When I was in art school, I was always painting. I was determined that I was going to be a painter. It was not until after my second degree that I picked up a camera and that was what I got famous for in the 90’s. The residue of video art is still in my work today in form of digital technology. At this point technology is blended so thoroughly into my work that now I am doing painting, printing and using digital and craft means. In a way I feel that I have found my way back to painting through these interventions.

By mixing digital methods with analogue craft Donegan creates works in which methods and styles from high tech and low tech meet – digital means meets physical craft.

I have developed a set of methods by combining digitally printed fabrics and craft techniques like dyeing and printing such as primitive forms like resist dyeing and my own adapted methods from batik. This combined with what I call an ecology of images which comes from the world around me: photographs I take, imagery that I am attracted to online, low-end consumer imagery and things I find in everyday life such as clothing and patterns. I am always collecting images and reusing them again and again.

The printing and publishing practice seems to be the common ground between Donegan’s and Roth’s works. In one of the glass displays showing Roth’s works I stumble upon a stack of illustrations very simplistically piled up revealing only the top image. This pile symbolises the quantity of Roth’s works and it might suggest the challenge that the curator had to face when dealing with Roth’s massive production.

On a table, fourteen books titled either ‘dieter roth’ or ‘dieter rot’ and all numbered differently: ‘dieter roth 3’, ‘dieter rot 20’, ‘dieter roth 12’ are displayed. Flipping through the pages of these books I understood that this format was for Roth a way of documenting his own practice, other people’s art, old newspapers articles, cartoons, sketches, prints and geometric figures. One book is even showing a collection of Roth’s own books. A book on books!

Installation view, Dieter Roth. Photograph: Mary Buckland/Skaftfell

When asking Donegan about her specific interest in printing she quickly connects it to her practice as a painter.

The recent history of painting is printing. I see a heritage of especially American artists dealing with reproduction and doing it in a way that is very much involved with “the hand” and the idea that you confront a surface not only by marking it, but by doubling it, repeating it. Working directly with fabric is for me the most influential. For instance with dye, the saturation of the fabric. The colors are not just ON the surface, they are IN the surface.

Walking around in the gallery space Donegan’s interest in colors is apparent and one work in particular stands out in the exhibition. Peels (2018/2019) has the shape of an oversized book and each of its pages is a dyed piece of fabric. The textile is thickly saturated with layers of color and the shapes vary from geometrical figures to freely sketched motives.

Cheryl Donegan, Peels, 2018/19 (Livre de Peinture). Photograph: Mary Buckland/Skaftfell

Cheryl Donegan, Flaps, 2019 (Livre de Peinture) Photograph: Mary Buckland/Skaftfell

Donegan connects her interest in colors with a childhood memory. Big books of wallpaper samples would be scattered around in the house where she grew up as her mother constantly had plans to redecorate and get new wallpapers on the walls.

My interest comes from the fantasy of getting lost in different worlds of color and textures. As with a page in a wallpaper book, each page in “Peels” represent a possibility, a bigger world, a different world. The pages are samples of possibilities! I remember having a lot of aesthetic pleasure looking through those thick books of wallpaper and feeling their patterns. I have these sensual memories of laying on my stomach in the living room turning these big pages of a book. Talking about low-tech, right?

In recent years Donegan has been working in the cross-field of art and fashion. Working with printing and dyeing of fabric Donegan found herself beginning to create actual wearables and garments. The three tracksuits exhibited in Skaftfell are all in strong signal colors and the prints are made by images of other tracksuits and fabrics. The caption next to the tracksuits informs that an „endless edition“ is available for sale on the website Print All Over Me, an American website to create and order custom printed garments.

Donegan highlights that the time we are currently living in is a time of distribution. From Donegan’s childhood in the 1960’s the world had seen a shift in the distribution structures from being a one-way function to today’s flow of creation, sharing and distribution in-between consumer and creator constantly blurring lines between the two.

One of the positive effects of social media – perhaps the only I can think of – is that today people can make things together and teach each other how to do things by sharing the process. Distribution is not going away, so let us use it to share things instead. I am not the top of the totem. I am a part of a system and that is the motive behind my art. That is what I am interested in!

Nanna Vibe Spejlborg Juelsbo

Skaftfell Art Center’s website http://skaftfell.is

Cover picture: Cheryl Donegan, ExtraLayer Tracksuit in Cracked, 2016 Print on demand, endless edition and Cheryl Donegan, Flaps, 2019 (Livre de Peinture). Photograph: Mary Buckland/Skaftfell

On display and for sale are also a collection of zines created by Cheryl Donegan and her friends.

As a side to the exhibition, Dieter Roth’s installation Húsin á Seyðisfirði, vetur 1988 – sumar 1995 [Houses of Seyðisfjörður, winter 1988 – summer 1995] is exhibited in Angró – a harbor building close to Skaftfell. This exhibition is made in collaboration with the Technical Museum in East Iceland.

Cheryl Donegan prints are purchasable here: www.paom.com/collections/cheryl-donegan

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