„Event Horizon“ at BERG Contemporary: a conversation with artists Marie Søndergaard Lolk, Sigrid Sandström & Hulda Stefánsdóttir

by Daría Sól Andrews | Miðvikudagur.09.2019 | artzine in english, Viðtöl

„Event Horizon“ at BERG Contemporary: a conversation with artists Marie Søndergaard Lolk, Sigrid Sandström & Hulda Stefánsdóttir

I spoke with the artists of Berg Contemporary’s recently opened exhibition, Event Horizon. Marie Søndergaard Lolk, Sigrid Sandström & Hulda Stefánsdóttir told me about their practice in non-representational painting, the particularities of working jointly yet separately, and their inspirational references in creation.

Can you describe for me the context behind your work in this exhibition at Berg Contemporary, Event Horizon?

Hulda Stefánsdóttir: Soon after we started to discuss the possibility of a joint exhibition, we found a common denominator of our works and interests in the art historical notion of negative pictorial space in the context of contemporary painting practices. We were all interested in the processes of image making that deal with a transferal, an inverse of sorts, or a translation, a mirroring, and to a certain degree: a deliberate confusion – the negative that becomes the positive. During this time of correspondence an image of a black hole, constructed from a mega data and the result of decades long science research was published in the media. We were all captured by it. This black hole image is a translation of an ineffable phenomena, an image of a world beyond the image, the imagined, set forth as an assemblage of the furthest distance, boundaries referred to as an event horizon. You wonder which is the actual image, the bright orange-yellow halo of the black hole or the black middle dot in the image? In fact, the image is not an image as such and the black dot in the middle is not a black hole but rather the shadow of a black hole. This spoke directly to our approach to painting, provoking thoughts on the limits of visibility.

Are there any recurring themes that you find yourself coming back to in your practice, places you draw influence from?

HS: Representation of time and movement on the surface of a still canvas is an overreaching theme I have approached from various angles before. Paul Klee said that the point about painting was to spatialize perception and make time simultaneous. It has to do with the functions of memory and the impossibility of presenting any given moment without echoes or traces of the past. Deriving from this is my interest in repetitions and ideas of the original and the copy, the foreground and the background, silent and disturbed surfaces. I seek to repeat, dissolve and reduce imagery to ambiguity as to stress the instability of our perception. It also has to do with art history and the history of painting that is a constant source of influence on my practice. Not only the fairly recent history of modern abstract painting and the non-representational, but history of art and image making to the furthers extensions of the past: cave paintings and discoveries of the earliest mark makings and from there on to today. This incredible need we have for visual expression as a source of communication and confirmation of existence are an endless source of inspiration.

Marie Søndergaard Lolk: Lately I’ve worked with translations between different states of images, often using found images as a source. Sometimes I’m treating an image as information or as something textual, that can be broken down into components, and so can have ambiguous readings. Sometimes it’s the other way around, the textual breaking up into bits of matter. I’m also very interested in joining ideas of the personal and impersonal, e.g. through interpretations of found drawings or found handwriting. Another recurring aspect of my work is perhaps the inclusion of glitches and faults, which also relates to this idea of translations I mentioned, it always implies a level of distortion or misrepresentation. In that connection I find I’m often looking at the generalizations and categorizations that things fall into, both visually and language-wise when you’re working with images.

Sigrid Sandström: I have for the past few years been preoccupied with paintings as evidence of past activities and how they nevertheless operate in present tense as they “unfold” in front the viewer. Traces of the painting process become parts of the final image. I think of my paintings as projection surfaces upon which we project our own agendas, and the many possible ways of approaching/viewing a painting is of great interest to me. The reception of a painting will keep shifting over time, suddenly it belongs to history while never the less it still exists as an object in the present, and I keep thinking about how the viewing that takes part in the making of a painting is somewhat different from the kind of viewing that happens once the painting is completed, and free for grabs, if you so will. The fluidity of the thing is of great interest to me.

Describe for me your process of production, both mentally and in physical creation.

HS: I often start with a textual reference, but during the process I realize that it is no less a material, a tactile and visual one; various impressions accumulating in a particular visual idea. I never consider new work to begin at a point zero, the works build up and, in a way, I am constantly responding to the previous ones. It would be hard for me to distinct the thoughts of the mind and the physical actions of the creation, sometimes matter comes ahead of a concrete thought and sometimes it takes some time to put my thoughts into actions. It is all about the tacit knowledge of visual thinking and a continuous process.

ML: The works in this show I’ve approached as a kind of bands or sequences, similar to strings of writing or even comic strips. Different elements are repeated and, in that way, become as much structure as image. I wanted to work with the formats as well and make them more like lines or borders in the space, something that could work architecturally. They are made on foamboard with marker pen and watercolour and so share a visual affinity with drawing, although the process doesn’t have the same directness. The seemingly quick lines and gestures of the source image are stenciled and in other ways modulated, partly as a way of deliberately halting the fluidity if the image.

SS: In my case, everything that happens in the studio is interconnected to earlier works, either in direct response to it or as part of a more casual dialogue with previous works. For this exhibition I wanted to work with the positive as a negative and vice versa. For instance, at the moment I use cotton rugs dipped in paint to press to the surface of the canvas, just like printmaking, in order to make the imagery in my paintings. The image is thus the imprint of the absent object, or ghost image of the rug I used as tool. I am interested in the fact that the absence of something simultaneously becomes the image. For this exhibition I chose to, in addition to the “printed” paintings show the actual tools (cotton rugs) as works in and of themselves along with the paintings.

How do you define nonrepresentational painting and its boundaries, as in the absence of an image?

HS: I think that one of the things we have in common as artists is to question the definitions and boundaries between the nonrepresentational and the representational. So, our painting practices deal more with the tension, and instability between the two, rather than the compartmentalization.
I question the image as such and at the same time I see my painting process as akin to printmaking or photographic dark room processes. What are we really seeing? To me it seems like a fragmented whole in a shifting and turning context. And the boundaries are constantly extended, the absence of an image broadening the pictorial surface and pushing the edge of visibility to the unforeseen.

How do you each as separate artists experience your three practices coming together in this exhibition?

HS: For me the dialogue and collaboration with Sigrid and Marie has been a challenging and enriching experience. Challenging in the positive way that it has provoked me to consider my work in a more direct broader context and enriching for the same reason, a sense for a wider perspective, shared commonalities and differences, yet a passion for the possibilities of the painting in contemporary art.

ML: I agree, it’s been a really good process and, to me, a stimulating encounter between our three quite different practices. I find the show to have some appealing dissonances as well as obvious common interest points. But it’s not so simple after all, I feel the show as a whole hasn’t quite settled in my mind yet.

SS: The show turned out surprisingly cohesive I find, because our approaches to art diverge from one another quite a bit. I very much enjoyed the collective effort of putting something together that was quite intangible at first. The days of installing the show were very focused as we were trying to get to know, understand and address our intentions and motivations. I thought we were very responsive to each other and our subtle, non-hierarchical collective way of decision making through trial and error was enriching for me.

Event Horizon, how do you define this term in relation to your exhibition here at Berg?

HS: As previously described the event horizon presented this viewpoint of imaging the end of visibility that we have all dealt with in one way or another in our works. A certain dishevelment that plays with these borderlines. The work may indicate a landscape, an object or a structure, but the work process always entails a willful distortion of a known reality. You question what you see and present a different way of visual experiencing / reading. The literate connotation of the phenomena is an inspiration in and of itself; event as an action, horizon as an indication of a distance, or a landscape, imagined or real. The Icelandic word Sjónhvörf, literally translates to edge of vision, and has a connation to myndhvörf (metaphor) or hvörf, that marks a turning point, the end of something and beginning of another, perhaps not yet known.

Why abstraction? What are the possibilities for you as artists in this specific approach?

HS: I think the free open space of abstraction is such an interesting way to approach existence and this crisscrossing time space we live in. These marks and dissolving symbols of a language meaning cut up and re-assembled, fragmented impressions that come together yet also feel like they are about to dissolve or burst.

Daría Sól Andrews

Event Horizon at Berg Contemporary runs until September 7, 2019.

Photos courtesy of Berg Contemporary and the artists.

Artists’ websites:

Marie Søndergaard Lolk: http://marielolk.com/

Hulda Stefánsdóttir: http://www.huldastefansdottir.is/

Sigrid Sandström: http://www.sigridsandstrom.com/

…and what then? at Nýlistasafnið

by Bergur Thomas Anderson | Sunnudagur.08.2019 | artzine in english, Viðtöl

…and what then? at Nýlistasafnið

Entering Nýló I see a large clock, colorful drawings for musical scores, crumbling plastic containers, meticulously crafted bodies and utopian visions that explore what’s ahead by touching upon our modern and possible not-so-distant future positions, identities and situations. I sit down with curator Sunna Ástþórsdóttir and artist Rebecca Erin Moran for a talk which took the theme of innovation as its starting point to speak about the more personal anxieties of contemporary artists and the agencies that the arts have in our current political landscape. …and what then? Is Sunna’s curatorial debut with Nýlistasafnið, she has been studying and practicing art theory and curation in Denmark for the last eight years. Rebecca Erin Moran is an American/Icelandic artist currently living in Berlin.

The exhibition gathers a handsome roster of artists: Andreas Brunner, Eva Ísleifs, Freyja Eilíf, Fritz Hendrik IV, Huginn Þór Arason, Libia Castro & Ólafur Ólafsson, Rebecca Erin Moran, Rúna Þorkelsdóttir, Steinunn Gunnlaugsdóttir, Thorvaldur Thorsteinsson and Þórður Ben Sveinsson.

B: The first thing I noticed when I walked in to Nýlistasafnið was a peculiar atmosphere. I somehow felt an immediate connection to science fiction. Was this intentional?

S: The exhibition looks to the future and I think it’s a natural step to move into science fiction when it comes to speculating things to come. The overall theme is glancing at things approaching us, how to approach them and exploring areas which are unknown to us at this date. We’re dealing with concepts of innovation, foretelling and poetically exploring what may or may not happen in our not so distant future.

B: To me, the large painting by Þórður Ben seems to have the strongest or most literal connection to sci-fi. It depicts a temple-like architecture surrounded by dreamy meadows and a utopic landscape bathed in Icelandic summer light. Here we are proposed with an escape from reality in favour of something greater. Could you tell me little bit about how this work came to the show?

S: Þórður’s painting has that approach for sure. It imagines a place which could very well be derived from a science fiction novel. With all of these artists, dealing with the future has to do with each of their intentions. This painting, for example, is from 1983, and I believe that looking towards utopian futures seemed like a brighter vision at the time. Today it seems like a far out dream, because the end of earth is becoming increasingly more feasible to us. Those who understand it do everything in their power to protect while for many, the future is too dark or hopeless to see these utopian, alternative realities. On the other hand, the utopian vision seems to feed into younger generations of artists. Fritz Hendrik IV brought two paintings to the show which depict similar scenarios, but imply more of a dune-like, outer-space scenario. The human is still present in his portrayals, and like Þórður, there is a craving to escape the instability through the making-of a possible world.

R: I think innovation links to sci-fi, and it ultimately connects to creating the spaces where something new can happen. It reminds me a bit of the Dialogues between David Bohm and Krishnamurti, where the reader witnesses epiphanies happening in real time. He released a whole series of transcriptual writings where he spoke with scientists, theorists and spiritualists discussing time and existence. It’s an exploration into the space where something new is being created. Sunna and I had long talks about the role of arts within the political sphere through that lens of being-in-creation, a speculative fiction/reality which can only happen in media res, its process coming into the world…

S: … and the show turned into a series of works which are glancing in to the unknown. I see each artist contributing richly to this as some works are in the midst of a decomposing process while others are proposing alternative, heterotopian and even utopian future scenarios. It opens up many discursive trajectories into means of poetically looking forward to what agency artists have today. The term sci-fi never came up in the process, but I saw it turning into a very sculptural, material speculation. We are interested in technology, robotics and ecosystems, but perhaps the role of the arts is to look into the thinking behind it. What the works in the show have in common is this speculative nature that image-making and representation have towards the question of and what then? We are all anxious about it and there is increasing worry and trouble arising in each of us as to how to solve current world problems. I found interesting to look into what contemporary artists could add to that dialog in their own way, without being guided towards making an exhibition strictly about the climate crisis, let’s say. This I feel made a poetic turn within my personal curatorial approach and I felt an increasing sense of trust in the fact that the works would evoke justful contemplations into these themes.

B: Rúna Thorkelsdóttir’s sculpture made of garden cress hangs gently and touches the floor of the gallery. It’s growing and contained at the same time, reflecting our relationship with nature and our longing to control it. The work has a life of its own, stripped from its natural setting and ultimately decomposes during the exhibition period. Can you tell me how our impact on the earth is effecting these artists’ thoughts?

S: Rúna’s work in particular makes the process of life and death visible. You can see the roots on the backside of the piece. The exhibition has only been going on for a week, and runs for six weeks! The cress will develop according to their circumstances, which are not ideal in this case. They’re supposed to be dying, but as with organic substances, it decomposes rather than rots. There is an element of chance here which allows things to take their natural course.

B: Uncertainty is in the air, for sure. Our times are dominated by instabilities and ambiguities, as is visible in f.ex. Huginn Þór Arason’s work. His sculptures from 2002 display plastic containers with colorful play-doh sculpted around them, perhaps hiding the reality of plastic waste with ornamental and colorful gestures?

S: Huginn’s work came from the archive of the Living Art Museum and I saw it bring the discourse around the conservation of an art work. The sculptures were much fresher when first made. When unboxing them, the crafted clay had turned soggy, crumbling and collapsing on top of their supports. It’s interesting to place together these different processes, between the natural and plastic, man made material. In both of these cases, we can wonder how time treats art works, and how we experience works from the past today if they are intentionally or non-intentionally supposed to change over time?

B: Would you say it’s a bit like unfreezing something?

S: In a way! As someone from the cultural sector you find yourself constantly dealing with this maintenance in art works such as these. You unfreeze them, blow the dust off and constantly check if something needs repairing. Often the works need re-adjusting or re-making the work all together! However, for Huginn’s piece it became necessary to show them as they came out of the box, as a slightly altered version of the works that were made a few years ago. With both of these artists, I see them creating a space for the viewer to contemplate this change in relation to their own body.

Thorvaldur Thorsteinsson’s video is another great example. His Most real death (2000) shows people taking turns staging their own death in front of a camera when shot at by a finger-gun. It exhibits this type of anticipation we live with, this knowledge we all have. In a very bodily way, you are confronted with your own reaction of the work. You might laugh at the first three enactments during this simple game of pretending, but then the violence kicks in. It’s a total of 37 people staging their death in front of the camera. I feel this work describes very well the overall approach that the artists took to the show’s themes. There is a lot of color and humour before the terror reveals itself to you. The viewer realizes that experiencing art changes over time, just like the artworks are evolving, decomposing and taking new shapes as the exhibition continues.

R: I feel it’s also interesting to look at the impact of humour that Thorvaldur’s work has. It’s meant to questions our ethics, but through this very specific style that he shares with his generation. It has this slap-stick like quality and a visual poetry. It reminds me a bit of Bas Jan Ader and how he staged emotions like sorrow or grievance. This particular body humour and gestural action had a lot to do with these artists. It is a very different type of humour if you compare it to the younger artists in the show. I feel that contemporary artists are faced with a totally different type of anticipation. Maybe one which places the body in relation to its environment, or attempts at contemplating, in a physical manner what is to become of this relationship. The younger generations seems to have a much darker or dystopic view of things.

S: Definitely. I see your work, Rebecca, along with Steinunn Gunnlaugsdóttir’s and Andreas Brunners as contributing to another conceptual thread of the show. I think that artists today are faced with the contemporary worries brought about by the human’s imprint on nature and other people. We seem to be haunted by guilt, on top of our anxieties, and we perform these socio- and political acts of undoing what we’ve done wrong. Perhaps even to see at what point in these complex relationships we actually belong?

B: Here we can transition from the utopian to the more contemporary idea of gender and the body, which I see resonating in Rebecca’s works. Would you like to tell me about the somatic onesie?

R: I just have this small anecdote before we go into that. I have a good friend in Berlin, who is 25, and getting her PhD in astrophysics. She is working with potential future environments for planets, and other complexities beyond my comprehension. One day, I mentioned that I was envious of her generation, as everything seems to be so possible in terms of creating new living conditions, gender fluidity, open communities. She turned to me and said bluntly: “but you will die a natural death, and our generation will witness the earth die first”. She is busy exploring the nuts and bolts of how to survive the earth’s destruction and what consequences it has for its inhabitants. When she said this, I was just like “woah…” She is in the science world and she’s confronted with these really real problems. The time is running out and figuring out an alternative before the 2050 deadline is just a very high, practical priority for her and the contemporary science world.

S: And here the anxiety kicks in again…

R: For sure! I had just never, thought that far!

B: Is the youngest generations of art students and scholars more inclusive because of this hidden knowledge? Is it because we are running out of time and they realize that it’s best to just join forces?

R: It’s something we can’t understand. In the past, there were generations that went through wars and saw the potential end of the world. But those were all very hypothetical, man made conclusions. We found ways to continue because we still had enough resources to re-build what we destroyed. Now the problem is actually real. The sciences today are actually trying to understand how to slow down this process or find an alternative in a new ecosystem. I found this extremely interesting.

My work, as in the Somatic Transit Onesie, romanticises evolution. I made it in 2015 for a show about the EU in Lichtenstein. It was presented with a sound piece called Stop belonging now. At that time I was idealizing if we could evolve in to a male/female/land-animal/sea-animal type of body. A hybrid of some sort, but seeing this body as already belonging to a past. The onesie piece therefore exists and is presented like a skin someone has already shed. So what comes after is unknown, and does not need to be visually represented. It aims to create a jumping off point for the imagination, I’m always looking for a state of potential; where a work creates an open ended process that is inclusive to the viewers experience. The onesie is perhaps the last point of materialization, what comes next is open.

S: This work is also about removing external markers through this dialog with the viewer. We have so many borders, there has always been this connection between the “one” and the “other”.

R: Stop belonging now, the sound piece, creates the notion of ending belonging in order to belong everywhere. Without perspective, point of view, in order to perceive all viewpoints. Erasure as a way of empowerment. As soon as you come to one end of the spectrum you’ve gone full circle. Identifying in the middle is where you get stuck. Fixed positioning is just a very strange and dangerous concept to me! Conservatives, who have fixed opinions about the LGBQT communities and then these same communities have fixed ideas about how a conservative thinks… our societal standards are always to reject a notion, or fight against a norm, the position is always fixed against something. I’m looking for a non-binary positioning which is neither on the offense nor defence. A place which is neither/and/or. A non-binary positioning which can’t be polarized.

B: Would you say this is totally neutral ground? What does this new life-form present itself as?

R: I don’t really believe in sameness, I believe in fluidity, process, and continual flux. But it’s just the level of which one zooms in or out. We talked a lot about non-being, about consciousness, about wholeness. There are many theoretical discourses about parts of a whole, but why do we constantly speak about parts? We’re always dissecting, categorizing, and picking at things on such a zoomed in level. It somehow takes away from just being in my view, takes away from the interconnectedness.

S: The print that Rebecca presents in the exhibition is a work in progress that might take on another form or become a part of a larger series in the future. I’m pleased to include this work in the show, as it strongly suggests a new kind of animal/human ambiguity and questions notions of intimacy and our preconceived notions of gender or our place in the natural world. On the side that faces the window we see a human holding this dog, but we can’t really see its a dog. You can sense that it’s an animal, by our reading of creatures. There is a beautiful collision that happens.

R: It was a great process working with Sunna. She understood the works before they entered the exhibition because she had this overview of what it could become. I was very happy to hand the choosing to her and where the print ended up being in the space.

S: Each artist added to the discourse of the exhibition, and its ideology was shaped through the unfolding of dialogs and experiencing the works themselves. It became important to me to keep the dialog open towards the end. This photowork is just, really, sensual and materialistic, it fell in to place after having strong dialogs throughout the entire process.

B: So, in the beginning the concept of the show was very open, and it’s theme’s come more through working with the artists?

S: I had specific questions that were related to the landscape of exhibitions happening in Iceland when I started working on the show. I knew it was going to have a socio-political angle to it. The framework shaped itself through having discussions and actually seeing what each artist contributes instead of forcing them in to a specific curatorial agenda.

R: Our first conversations were about doing a political show. But you were not really interested in overtly tackling contemporary politics, as in, protest, or propaganda let’s say…

S: It is about what we perceive as political art today and what role art can play in the political landscape. If you place something in the world, it always says something and that’s what we wanted to bring attention to. The works reflect on and invite you to re-think our current situations, deal with your anxieties, engage. Not in a didactic way, they propose what political positioning artists may be taking and have an inclusive positioning towards the viewers own time and place.

R: I think it’s overtly political to be against something. That is the easiest positioning, to be against something or with something. As a contrast to this show we can recall an infamous moment that Nýló had in 2011 with Koddu. It was a politically charged exhibition. Much of that work was radically against something. This was important at the time of course, as we were facing financial crisis. Right now, however, I think that political art should be about engagement and discourse; finding ways to form connections, even just being intimate.

S: The presences of the works in this show are strong. They can be evocative, questioning and disturbingly confronting. The atmosphere of the show is thought to offer this type of open engagement…

R: … and I really feel like this show escapes all tag line theories, which has a positive impact. It’s liberating to participate in a show that does not associate itself with a specific theoretical model or an -ism.

S: The anthropocene was a topic that came up frequently in my conversations with Andreas Brunner and I think that many people might discover that, while others discover something else in his work. Some people are engaged with choosing -isms and theories attached to exhibitions and I know that the risk of not having such strict tag-lines or themes might result in a chaotic exhibition.

B: I think that with this positioning, the poetry of the exhibition reveals itself. Coming back to Andreas Brunner, it gestures at our attempts to undo the things we have done to nature by covering up our workings and re-workings in to the earth’s layers. He reflects on this through small marble pieces, which is usually thought to be a very sacred material, something which can’t be manipulated. We’re always dealing with these gestures of undoing, as artists, as people.

S: There is almost no untouched surface on the earth left, and at the same time we’re very unapologetic about it, we seem to constantly be in the process of covering up our own traces. It is as if we were idealizing our own absence and idleness at these places, as if nothing ever happened.

R: There’s also a trend now in idealizing native and indigenous traditions, and it’s usually done by white people. I find this trend not only awkward, but also total cultural appropriation. This show, on the other hand, is more about looking forward instead of trying to get back to. I do think we need to unlearn industrialization and recognise our animalistic sides and deeper connections to the earth and all living things: but without trying to emulate the past.

B: There is constant guilt in the air of those who have oppressed and suppressed, for example how the colonisation of Suriname or the Dutch Caribbean in the Netherlands is being undone through the renaming of places or the revisiting of their culture by white people. It does lie on a very sensitive border and has an awkward feel to it. It’s part of the process of becoming guilt-free of the past, of righting wrongs. But honestly, how else to do to it? What comes next?

S: Exactly, why is there this need to become guilt free? We’re in a place where we can’t undo more. We are acting oblivious to what comes next. I had a talk a few days ago and they asked me what if all these terrible things happen and we just survive?

B: You mean, what happens when we actually inhabit a place we can’t imagine what is like at this time?

S: Precisely, what happens beyond this beyond?

B: I think one of the stronger points in this show is to refuse a single categorical umbrella. It brings forth the personal anxieties in each participant and invites more intimate readings as to look into the role of art within all these contemplations. The universal is explored through the personal. There is more space to think about the possibilities than what should be or what we should have done. I find this very important, to localize these problems and share them.

S: We hear about the artist as being a mirror of society, but we seem to have lost what the mirror shows us. So my question becomes, what is the errand of art in society today? There has never been a reflection which shows you the real, so the creation of personal, alternative heterotopias become a way to actually explore this question. Ultimately, the artists here are exploring their role just as it is important for everyone to attempt a private understanding within our current state of things. The reflection is found in the artworks and I have found great readings in each of the works here. As a curator I’m interested in seeing how an artist can make political art without overtly educating and narrating an audiences experience. How to make an artwork which is not with or against, and actually trusts the experience that the work brings about in itself?

R: We’re not here to tell you how it is. We like things to have a life of their own and trust in the life that the art piece can have. Sometimes the artist sets limitations with their intentions by using text or didactic forms. Sometimes we don’t realize it, but at most times an artwork can have a much bigger identity than the one the artist insists on. Using naming, or words, can be a limitation. It’s time to celebrate the situations that an artwork can set up with any crowd without leading them to a certain conclusion or opinion. Many people come up to me and they say “oh you had that guy on the floor! It looked great!”, and instead of being like “well, actually, it is a… and it means this, and you should interpret it exactly as I do”. I just don’t like to be told when to change my position, my reading, my experience.

S: The truth is, logic just follows what you experience, directly. You should always trust the viewer to make their own conclusions, based on their experiences. They should not be controlled, and my intention is making a show which is accessible to people who don’t necessarily visit art galleries on a regular basis. It is important for the arts to participate in any contemporary political discourse we are facing, be it a local or a global one. What is even more important is that the arts should be inclusive and welcome to different readings. We are all facing these problems and I find it interesting to see what the arts can show within the current spectrum. With such a diverse group, who all contributed greatly to this journey of speculations and questions, I wish to create a fertile, poetic ground to contemplate what is to come. This is what I hope translates in to the viewer, who always adds something to the dialog just by experiencing.

Bergur Thomas Anderson

The exhibition …and then what? runs until 4th of August 2019.

Photo credits: Vigfús Birgirsson

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

Boekie Woekie, the longest running artists’ bookshop performance

by Erin Honeycutt | Sunnudagur.06.2019 | artzine in english, Viðtöl

Boekie Woekie, the longest running artists’ bookshop performance

In 1975, Ulises Carrión wrote the manifesto The New Art of Making Books. In the manifesto, the Mexican writer, curator, and conceptual artist expanded upon the traditional book form as a three-dimensional site of experience rather than as a container of texts.

The manifesto begins with the dismantling of notions of the book: “A book is a sequence of spaces. Each of these spaces is perceived at a different moment – a book is also a sequence of moments. A book is not a case of words, nor a bag of words, nor a bearer of words.”

A new book era had begun and Carrión urged artists and writers to use newly available printing technologies to bypass traditional book markets as well as to form networks and communities in which to distribute independently. Carrión (1941, San Andrés Tuxtla, Mexico – 1989, Amsterdam) was a key figure in post-1960s avant-garde. Upon arriving in Amsterdam in 1972, he became part of the founding of the art venue, In-Out Center (1972-1975) and in 1975 founded Other Books and So, one of the first artists’ bookstores in the world. In 1979, it became Other Books and So Archive.

Today the artists’ bookshop, Boekie Woekie is carrying forth where Carrión left off and is the longest running artist’s bookstore in the world. The shop now has about 7,000 titles which are almost exclusively self-published or small press books.

The small book shop at Berenstraat 16 was at first only technically allowed to be called a gallery as the founders had art degrees and no background in the selling of books (such is Dutch law.) The labyrinth of publications of varying shapes and sizes makes up the vast collection that seems to exude the history of the place in the many scattered layers of books and publications. The shop is now a relic in the neighborhood in an area now vastly different than how it appeared just thirty years ago. Although the books are cataloged, the brimming shelves and tables are an exhibition in themselves with the search and discovery as part of the unfolding experience.

Some of the artists’ books can be seen as exhibitions in themselves, or rather like the soft imprint of larger material work, an underlayer of vision that can only be found and told in book form. In a conversation with one of the founders, the German artist Jan Voss, I was told in more detail about the shop’s history and his vision of the function of the artists’ book.

What were some of the motivations behind founding the place?

The motivations behind founding the place were more multi-fold than one would perhaps think. Of the six people who founded the place, only two were from the Netherlands while the others came from far away places. Running it now is Henriëtte van Egten from Amsterdam and Rúna Thorkelsdóttir from Iceland and myself from Germany.

In 1985, we needed to find a place. Besides the fact that we had in common boxes full of our own books, we also had Iceland. Iceland was the common link among us in one way or another. Dieter Roth, who had been living in Iceland, was my teacher in Düsseldorf and inspired me to start making books. His books were the first we started to include in the shop that was not our own. Although in 1985 we knew each other individually because we had been making books, we didn’t see this as a real venture. If you had said to me then that I would be sitting here 30 years later in the same book shop, I would say you are mad. Our real motivation was to show our presence in this city and to become identifiable as artists.

Were there other art bookshops at the time?

There were places that had an expanded art books section, but not an artists’ bookshop. We all had a memory of Other Books and So, opened by Ulises Carrión in 1975 where we all had our works. It was open for two years and was never established before or after but just came about as an impulse of the time on a one-man scale. The booksellers were not the ones that were so important but it was young art historians who were using the printed matter as a platform from which to explore and find their way into the world of art history.

I went to the Düsseldorf art academy and I noticed pretty quickly that drawing was something I would be doing. In those parameters, that was what you were expected to do. You drew and it was a confused world in which labels of good and bad are all over the place. It became clear that drawing in a sequence was quite compelling to me and of course, if you have a sequence of drawings, books become a natural answer. I became a student of Dieter Roth. One of the first things he did in Düsseldorf was to buy an offset machine in the late 1960s. Figuring out how it worked and the consequence of all that led to the door of opening Boekie Woekie really.

You can also have the beginning story as was replicated in Amsterdam what then was only ten years earlier. I hadn’t progressed much really. I bought an offset machine and basically, we are still running it. So in the first five years, we were only selling our own works – you could also call it a five-year performance. You could hardly call it a bookshop as it was more a display window. It was ridiculous.

After those first five years, we had come down to three owners, Rúna, Hette and I.

On the first of January, 1991, we moved into this location. The thing is that we are not booksellers; we are artists. Our artistic material is the people with whom we talk and in the shop I treat those people who come in as my material. In the sense that they go to the “artist bookstore” of the town, they don’t really need me. It is not all material anymore. It is performance really.

Are there any books that are of special significance to you?

The Dieter Roth works, of course, but if I give it more thought it is simply the multitude of human endeavors that have evolved into something becoming this little package sliced of the world of a book. This complex thing that a book is with so many faces and so many incredible motivations that can be seen outside the context in which books are happening in our world. An artists’ book exists because it doesn’t count on the newspaper or the television or will be propagated in some professional manner; the thing that will make money as opposed to the thing that makes someone’s craziness go so far to make someone actually do it. The tip of the tip of the tip of the tip of the iceberg – that is what is visible here. It is making visible this urge for people to have something to say in a way that is penetrating to the ears of the people they are actually speaking to – this enormous choir of ambition and strife and being the human not content with what there is anyhow but who gives that extra thing to it. It is a celebration of being who we are – a celebration of the endeavor.

This article is part one of three articles in a series based on artists‘ books and the multidimensional relationship between the book form and contemporary art.

Erin Honeycutt

Boekie Woekie website: https://boewoe.home.xs4all.nl/

Isle of Art: an interview with the author Sarah Schug

by Ana Victoria Bruno | Sunnudagur.05.2019 | artzine in english, Viðtöl

Isle of Art: an interview with the author Sarah Schug

Sarah Schug is a German journalist based in Brussels who has been traveling in Iceland since 2009, after noticing the lack of books about Icelandic art she decided to take action and fill the gap. Her recently published book Isle of Art constitutes a comprehensive manual for those who want to get an insight of what is going on in the island’s art scene.

Sarah, when did you come in contact with Iceland for the first time? When and why did you decide to write a whole book about its art scene?

The first time I came in contact with Iceland was at the age of 7, when the TV series Nonni & Manni was broadcasted in Germany, and I fell in love with the horses and turf houses and waterfalls. It is since then that I wanted to see Iceland, and I did so for the first time in 2009, if I remember correctly. I totally fell in love with it again, and returned several times. As I’ve been working as an art and culture journalist, and Icelandic artists started popping up in exhibitions in Belgium, where I live, I started to put the two together and wanted to find out more about it. I actually searched for books about the subject, and couldn’t find much, except for monographs. I really felt like there was a gap to be filled. When I told my friend Pauline Miko, a Belgian-Hungarian photographer about the idea and she said she’d do the photos, I decided to just go for it.

Can you tell me something about the process of researching, selecting and interviewing artists and the people of the Icelandic art community?

First there was a lot of reading and desk research, and then I went to live in Reykjavík with my boyfriend for two months, from February to April 2017. I remember, the day we arrived, we directly went to an opening at i8 gallery. During these two months I attended lots of openings and exhibitions, visited art spaces and galleries, and talked with so many people from the Icelandic art world, getting to know the scene from the inside. The lack of existing literature on the subject meant that word of mouth was the principal source of information. In the end you quickly get a grasp for what’s important, which names come up again and again, and so on. Regarding the selection: I spoke to newbies and old timers, Icelanders and foreigners, young and old artists, students and stars. The idea wasn’t to show “the best” artists (whatever that even means), but to paint a full picture of the art scene as a whole by bringing together a rich canon of different voices and perspectives from inside the Icelandic art community.

From left: artists Sara Riel and Ragnar Kjartansson, collector Pétur Arason.

What makes the Icelandic art scene interesting in your opinion?

I think it’s a really intriguing and unique case to examine, not only because of its remote geographic location, but also due to its short history. And of course it’s incredible how vibrant and active it is, how many great artists it has brought about, despite having such a small population. It has all the ingredients necessary for a vibrant scene: commercial galleries, museums, art schools and a multitude of independent art spaces. At the same time, it’s still somehow positioned on the sidelines of the international art market, which is interesting as well.

How does the Icelandic art scene differ from the one you experience everyday in Brussels?

I think there is a spirit of creative freedom, playfulness, collaboration and fearless experimentation that you hardly find anywhere else. Of course there is also no doubt that globalization, digitalization, and the explosion of international travel have caused the island’s art scene to become bigger, more professional, and more diverse. But I found it very pleasant how accessible and welcoming it was, which facilitated the creation of this book extremely. In places like London or Paris, which have very closed-off art scenes, the process would have been very different and more difficult. In Iceland, everyone is just a phone call away; everybody knows each other. News travel fast, and when we arrived up north, we were stunned to find out that people had already been tipped off about us. In that sense, it’s not too different from Brussels or Belgium, whose art scene is also quite open and accessible – I think it’s typical for smaller countries.

The biggest difference is probably the existence or development of an art market and a collector base. Belgium has one of the highest collector densities in the world together with Switzerland, and in Iceland there are maybe five serious collectors. Belgium has a massive number of commercial galleries, Iceland has three. There are no art fairs in Iceland like Art Brussels. It’s a completely different situation. But this positioning slightly on the sidelines of the art market also has its advantages: a certain creative freedom and fearlessness and confidence come with it, which a lot of artists actually mentioned in their interviews.

Installation view: Slæmur Félagsskapur / Bad Company, at Kling og Bang, March – April, 2017.

How do you see the future of the Icelandic art scene?

I think it’s in the process of growing up. Just take the opening of the Marshall House, which happened while I was living in Reykjavík actually. I was lucky to witness this pivotal moment first-hand. Many artists I talked to described it as a game-changing, and I think it has the potential to be a new destination on the international art map. At the same time, many voiced concerns about the grassroots scene. With Nýlo and Kling & Bang in the fancy Marshall House – who will fill that gap? And how will the grassroots scene be strong when there’s a housing crisis going on and space has become unaffordable? But normally art always finds its way – I think we will see more initiatives outside of the city center, and places such as RÝMD or Midpunkt are signs for that. And I think there will be more and more art spaces in the countryside and outside of Reykjavík, a movement which has already begun as well. I was amazed by the high-quality exhibitions I found in small villages such as Hjalteyri or Djúpivogur.

The book is already sold out in Iceland, this constitutes a really good feedback. What do you feel the book has accomplished? And is there something you regret you didn’t manage to include in Isle of Art?

I feel, and that’s the feedback I have been getting by a lot of people from the Icelandic art scene, that the book is a kind of time capsule, showing the Icelandic art scene in its full splendor at this certain point in time, while also looking back on its past and trying to have a look at its future as well. I think the book is valuable to everyone who wants to learn more about what’s going on in Iceland when it comes to art, but it can be also an interesting basis for discussions within the Icelandic art scene itself.

I don’t have any regrets, but of course there are many artists whom I love and respect that are not in the book, because you just can’t include everyone. The more pages you print, the more expensive it gets, and as it is self-financed, we couldn’t afford more pages, 256 is already quite a lot, I think! I would love to do a second book at one point with all the artists I haven’t been able to give pages in this one – so, if someone wants to sponsor or fund it, I’m all ears.

Sigurður Guðmundsson, Eggin í Gleðivík, Djúpivogur, 2009.

The book will launch at the Living Art Museum on the 28^th of May, right? Would you like to tell us something about the event?

Yes, exactly. When the first books arrived in Iceland a lot of people were asking about a launch event and so I decided to organize one. I wanted it to be at a space that is part of the book, and The Living Art Museum has had such significance for Iceland’s art scene that I am very happy to be able to do it there. I’m also super happy about all the support I’m getting: Icelandair offered to ship more books from Belgium, and Reykjavik Roasters are providing coffee. The idea is to create a kind of informal „round table“, an art café if you will, and everyone is invited to stay and chat about the state of the Icelandic art scene (which is something I realised Icelandic artist love to do). One wall will be covered with posters displaying decisive quotes by artists, gallerists, curators, etc. taken from the book, as an entry point and food for thought. The whole idea is not only a nod to Guðmundur Jónsson’s Listamenn, whose frame shop serves as a bit of the living room or of the art scene where everyone hangs out and chats and drinks coffee, but also to the research process of the book, which largely consisted of conversations over coffee.

Is there something else you would like to say before we end the interview?

Just a big thank you to everyone – I’m amazed how warmly I’ve been welcomed by everyone, and how helpful people are, especially the artists themselves. Takk fyrir!

Ana Victoria Bruno

Sarah Schug (1980) is a Brussels-based German journalist who writes about art, culture, design and photography. Her work has been published in The Word Magazine, The Bulletin, H.O.M.E. Magazine, Previiew Journal, Crust Magazine, Tique Art Paper, and others. In 2014 she launched independent online magazine See you there, putting forward Belgium’s cultural scene, and curated the exhibition “No place like home” at Brussels Art Department.

Isle of Art website: https://www.isleofartbook.com

Photo Credit: Pauline Mikó. Ragnar Kjartansson’s portrait: Lilja Birgisdóttir.

The book will launch on Tuesday the 28th at 18:00 at Nýlistasafnið / The Living Art Museum.

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