Post-Digital World(s) of Icelandic Art
Writing about contemporary digital culture in mid-2020 has a different context than it did at the beginning of the year. In the midst of a global pandemic in which the Merry-Go-Round of the art world has been brought to a standstill brings a new consideration of the...
What’s more monumental than buildings? a show and tell with Melanie Ubaldo
Until we take the time to know any place intimately, our awareness is often limited to our associations with their landmarks and stereotypes. When I visit new places, I pay extra attention as I trace the land with my feet to orient myself until foreign feels familiar....
Digital Dynamics – Arts New Representations
The exhibition Arts New Representations opens on Saturday June 13th at 14:00 on the website of the online magazine Artzine (https://www.artzine.is). The exhibition is part of the presentation and publication of Digital Dynamics in Nordic Contemporary Art, edited by...
Fermenting process: a show and tell with Sindri Leifsson
With Bold Knife and Fork opens with M.F.K. Fisher poignantly stating that gradual changes in a basic recipe are intrinsically tangled with man’s history and assumed progress.[1] This statement continues to resonate with me months after initially reading it, as it...
The Drumming Beat: Daníel Magnússon at Hverfisgallerí
Daníel Magnússons´s exhibition TRANSIT at Hverfisgallerí explores a rhythm of detail, depicting images of close up angles and geometrical forms created out of seemingly everyday moments and objects. In this way Magnússon´s photographs examine how construction and...
A short note on post-COVID-19: The Terms of Art in Iceland
All of a sudden, things are moving quickly. 600 months have been added to the artist’s salaries starting this year, seemingly available for the foreseeable future. An emergency fund of 500 million krónur has also been created for artists dealing with this coming year....
Museums in the time of CoronaVirus – A Conversation Around Digital Efforts
The rise of Covid19 and the government imposed social gathering ban has taken its toll across all cultural platforms of consumption in Iceland, not least of all on the arts. Many museums like Hafnarborg, Gerðarsafn, Listasafn Árnesinga, and Nýlistasafnið, to name a...
What rainbows we choose to see, a show and tell with Florence Lam
In what continues to be my favourite work of Hong Kong-based artist Florence Lam, a mirror, a stool and a spray bottle are arranged by a window in a carefully considered way. The Particularities of a Place (2015) humbly supplies us the tools to make a rainbow (should...
Between publication and exhibition with Lukas Kindermann’s Illustrated London News Editions
On March 7th, 2020, ´uns artbooks presented its second publication by artist Lukas Kindermann, in cooperation with Studio Studio. The publication is presented as an exhibition in the gallery formerly known as Maniere Noire in Berlin, where ´uns will be showcasing its...
The Artist Platforming the Subtle: Meet Sunna Svavarsdóttir
“when tying your shoelaces place one foot in front of the other when wishing for wet feet pour water inside your boots, when a pause is needed put your head inside a stone…” These lines, elegant and playful, grant insight into the creative output of Icelandic artist...
Iridescence, domesticity, and sweaty cheese: a show and tell with Anna Hrund Másdóttir
I remember the first time I had a Pop-Tart. It was Frosted Strawberry flavoured, with a thick, shiny, baby pink glaze and rainbow sprinkles smeared across the top. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect but I had a feeling it would be sweet, so it drew me in immediately....
Artefacts from the restless art’s excavations
History occurs in a space between the archive and life, between the past that is being collected and reality, understood as everything that has not been collected.[1] Today the Living Art Museum - Nýlistasafnið as well known as Nýló publishes and makes...
Hreinn Friðfinnsson’s assistants on the outside looking in (from the inside)
Recently on view at KW Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin from September 28th, 2019 to January 5, 2020, was a retrospective of Hreinn Friðfinnsson’s work To Catch a Fish with a Song: 1964 – Today. It was organized in partnership with Centre d’Art Contemporain...
New, dystopian and unexpected: “I’m notreallyinterested in anythinggreaterthan life”
Disarray. Carefully scripted disarray, with plastic-wrappers, video-makers, light-fixtures and oil slicks, peculiar, confusing, mysterious; welcome to Knut Eckstein’s constructed world. “Tread lightly,” the woman beside me warns, “there are things on the floor.”...
“Lucky Me?” by Lucky 3 at Kling & Bang
In the exhibition Lucky Me? the art-collective Lucky 3, consisting of Darren Mark, Dýrfinna Benita Basalan, and Melanie Ubaldo, draws to attention their experiences that fall in between identification with- and marginalization of the Filipino community and culture....
“Kiss the day goodbye” by Charles Atlas at i8 gallery
As the sun disappears from the sky in Iceland, it seems fitting that i8 Gallery should choose an exhibition of this kind to end the year and take us into the new decade. Charles Atlas’s 2015 video installation Kiss the Day Goodbye displays a romanticized vision of the...
A! performance festival: in conversation with director Hlynur Hallsson
In its 5th iteration, A! Performance Festival returned this year to galvanise Akureyri’s art scene. Showcasing the interplay between visual arts and performance, the annual four-day festival welcomed a variety of established and up-and-coming artists onto the Northern...
“It’s buzzing with energies”: Unpacking the Euro-Icelandic Art Exchange
Like an intricate seam, there are three layers of cultural thread which stitch Iceland’s art scene together with Europe. The first thread is interwoven through the individuals; the fibres shaped by the artists and the personal Euro-Icelandic connections they forge....
The Portal, Illuminated – Styrmir Örn Guðmundsson at Berg Contemporary
In a comic-book reminiscent and delightfully playful fashion, Styrmir Örn Guðmundsson unveils an intertwining of nature, human, and cosmic energy in The Thirteenth Month at Berg Contemporary. Styrmir connects the human to our supernatural and earthly elements,...
“You are the Input” by Ingunn Fjóla Ingthorsdóttir at Gallerie Herold, Bremen
Arriving on the train to Bremen, I found the artist-run Galerie Herold by following a set of abandoned train tracks from the station. Upon arriving in the gallery, I stood in the main door frame and looked into the exhibition by Ingunn Fjóla Ingthorsdóttir, seeing the...
Pavilion Nordico: a bridge between the Nordic countries and Argentina
I met with Sara Løve Daðadóttir, Josefin Askfelt and Emil Willumsen who are part of the team behind Pavilion Nordico in Buenos Aires, a project established in early 2019 which functions as exhibition space, residency and art centre for Nordic creators. The project...