{"id":9351,"date":"2020-02-02T14:30:10","date_gmt":"2020-02-02T14:30:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/artzine.is\/?p=9351"},"modified":"2021-02-10T06:26:42","modified_gmt":"2021-02-10T06:26:42","slug":"hreinn-fridfinnssons-assistants-on-the-outside-looking-in-from-the-inside","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artzine.is\/?p=9351","title":{"rendered":"Hreinn Fri\u00f0finnsson\u2019s assistants on the outside looking in (from the inside)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>[et_pb_section fb_built=&#8220;1&#8243; fullwidth=&#8220;on&#8220; custom_padding_last_edited=&#8220;on|desktop&#8220; _builder_version=&#8220;3.22&#8243; custom_padding_tablet=&#8220;50px|0|50px|0&#8243; custom_padding_phone=&#8220;&#8220; transparent_background=&#8220;off&#8220; padding_mobile=&#8220;off&#8220; make_fullwidth=&#8220;off&#8220; use_custom_width=&#8220;off&#8220; width_unit=&#8220;off&#8220; custom_width_px=&#8220;1080px&#8220; custom_width_percent=&#8220;80%&#8220;][et_pb_fullwidth_image src=&#8220;https:\/\/artzine.is\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/HF05.jpg&#8220; _builder_version=&#8220;4.2.2&#8243; animation=&#8220;off&#8220;][\/et_pb_fullwidth_image][\/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=&#8220;1&#8243; custom_padding_last_edited=&#8220;on|desktop&#8220; admin_label=&#8220;section&#8220; _builder_version=&#8220;3.22&#8243; custom_padding_tablet=&#8220;50px|0|50px|0&#8243; custom_padding_phone=&#8220;&#8220; transparent_background=&#8220;off&#8220; padding_mobile=&#8220;off&#8220; make_fullwidth=&#8220;off&#8220; use_custom_width=&#8220;off&#8220; width_unit=&#8220;off&#8220; custom_width_px=&#8220;1080px&#8220; custom_width_percent=&#8220;80%&#8220;][et_pb_row padding_mobile=&#8220;off&#8220; column_padding_mobile=&#8220;on&#8220; _builder_version=&#8220;3.25&#8243; background_size=&#8220;initial&#8220; background_position=&#8220;top_left&#8220; background_repeat=&#8220;repeat&#8220; make_fullwidth=&#8220;off&#8220; use_custom_width=&#8220;off&#8220; width_unit=&#8220;off&#8220; custom_width_px=&#8220;1080px&#8220; custom_width_percent=&#8220;80%&#8220;][et_pb_column type=&#8220;4_4&#8243; _builder_version=&#8220;3.25&#8243; custom_padding=&#8220;|||&#8220; custom_padding__hover=&#8220;|||&#8220;][et_pb_post_title meta=&#8220;off&#8220; date_format=&#8220;j.m. Y&#8220; featured_image=&#8220;off&#8220; _builder_version=&#8220;4.7.7&#8243; title_font=&#8220;|300||on|||||&#8220; title_text_align=&#8220;center&#8220; title_font_size=&#8220;40px&#8220; title_letter_spacing=&#8220;1px&#8220; title_all_caps=&#8220;on&#8220; background_color=&#8220;rgba(255,255,255,0)&#8220; parallax=&#8220;on&#8220; parallax_method=&#8220;off&#8220; max_width=&#8220;100%&#8220; title_font_size_tablet=&#8220;30px&#8220; title_font_size_phone=&#8220;26px&#8220; title_font_size_last_edited=&#8220;on|phone&#8220; use_border_color=&#8220;off&#8220; border_color=&#8220;#ffffff&#8220; border_style=&#8220;solid&#8220; parallax_effect=&#8220;on&#8220; module_bg_color=&#8220;rgba(255,255,255,0)&#8220; global_module=&#8220;3887&#8243; saved_tabs=&#8220;all&#8220;][\/et_pb_post_title][et_pb_text _builder_version=&#8220;4.2.2&#8243; background_size=&#8220;initial&#8220; background_position=&#8220;top_left&#8220; background_repeat=&#8220;repeat&#8220;]<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><strong>Recently on view at KW Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin from September 28th, 2019 to January 5, 2020, was a retrospective of Hreinn Fri\u00f0finnsson\u2019s work <i>To Catch a Fish with a Song: 1964 \u2013 Today. <\/i>It was organized in partnership with Centre d\u2019Art Contemporain Gen\u00e8ve where the exhibition was on view from 24 May\u2009\u2013\u200925 August, 2019, coinciding with a new book on the artist\u2019s career launched in Geneva and Berlin.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Befitting the intricate storylines of Hreinn Fri\u00f0finsson\u2019s work, which often contain notions of time interwoven with revelation and concealment, I decided to talk to three of his current and former assistants about the artist instead of taking the usual research routes into the gathering information. I realized while walking around the exhibition <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">To Catch A Fish With Song <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">at KW<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0that, although I had been writing about Icelandic art for a few years now and had even interned at his gallery, I8, in Reykjavik, for a year, the artist had somehow slipped from my focus.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-9357 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/artzine.is\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/HF04-scaled-e1580633409504.jpg\" alt=\"HREINN FRI\u00d0FINNSSON Correspondence, 1991-2014 envelopes, paper 14 x 18.2 cm. Courtesy of i8 Gallery.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1443\" \/><span style=\"font-size: small;\"><strong>Hreinn Fri\u00f0finnsson<\/strong><\/span><strong style=\"font-size: small;\">\u00a0<em>Correspondence<\/em>, 1991-2014 envelopes, paper 14 x 18.2 cm. Courtesy of i8 Gallery.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">An opportunity to study his work closely never arrived, and perhaps, I never felt the push as he is such a mythological figure in the Icelandic art world, like a godfather of Conceptual art in Iceland. He is often mentioned in context with the brothers Sigur\u00f0ur and Kristj\u00e1n Gu\u00f0mundsson of his generation, who studied in Holland in the 1970\u2019s and returned to Iceland, mixing the international modes of conceptual art with a distinctly poetic Icelandic gesture, really using our connotations with words as a work in itself in this fluid play with words. I always got this sense that there was a level of respect that you just have for the Eddas and poetry in general when you grow up in Iceland. I always thought about these old stories about how poets in the Sagas didn\u2019t use swords or, but if you wanted to fight you would have a battle with words as though they were real physical weapons themselves. What these magic words are I have often thought about, especially in making a connection to a specifically Icelandic style of conceptual art.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-9353 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/artzine.is\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/HF01.jpg\" alt=\"HREINN FRI\u00d0FINNSSON House Project, First House, 1974 Mixed media. Courtesy of i8 Gallery. \" width=\"1921\" height=\"1282\" srcset=\"https:\/\/artzine.is\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/HF01.jpg 1921w, https:\/\/artzine.is\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/HF01-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/artzine.is\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/HF01-1024x683.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/artzine.is\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/HF01-768x513.jpg 768w, https:\/\/artzine.is\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/HF01-1536x1025.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/artzine.is\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/HF01-1080x721.jpg 1080w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1921px) 100vw, 1921px\" \/><span style=\"font-size: small;\"><strong>Hreinn Fri\u00f0finnsson<\/strong><\/span><strong style=\"font-size: small;\">\u00a0<em>House Project, First House<\/em>, 1974 Mixed media. Courtesy of i8 Gallery.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Perhaps I never wanted to penetrate the elusive figure of Hreinn and rather wanted to keep him in this lofty and unreachable place of inexplicable poetry that was somehow tied into a tradition of poetry that the language just oozes, in the way it adjusts to situations and objects, like a phenomenological lens of the world in itself. This is very much an outsider of the language looking in, although I speak it enough to get by, but not with an inner sense for the language. I don\u2019t have a feel for words. This was the golden halo I had wrapped Hreinn inside, faithful to the truth or not, at least it was conceptual. I was familiar with Hreinn through the exhibition and book called <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Homecomings<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> edited by Annabelle von Girsewald and <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Cassandra Edlefsen Lasch, which looked at<\/span> <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Georges Perec\u2019s <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Esp\u00e8ces d\u2019espaces<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> (<\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Species of Spaces<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, 1974) in the context of Hreinn\u2019s <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">House Project <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">which also launched in 1974. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0In talking to his assistants, I saw the form of my gaining knowledge of the artist as being akin to this most sustaining narrative work of his career, the <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">House Project <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(1974 &#8211; ), which began as a gesture that would successively take many different forms.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cIn the summer of 1974, a small house was built in the same fashion as S\u00f3lon Gu\u00f0mundsson intended to do about half a century ago, that is to say, an inside-out house. It was completed on the 21st of July. It is situated in an unpopulated area of Iceland, and in a place from which no other man-made objects can be seen. The existence of this house means that \u2018outside\u2019 has shrunk to the size of a closed space formed by the walls and the roof of the house. The rest has become \u2018inside\u2019. The house harbors the whole world except itself.\u201d (1 Hreinn Fri\u00f0finnsson, <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">House Project: First House, Second House, Third House<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> (Crymogea, Reykjav\u00edk, 2012).)<\/span><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-9354 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/artzine.is\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/HF06-scaled-e1580633348453.jpg\" alt=\"HREINN FRI\u00d0FINNSSON House Projcet, Third House, 2011 stainless steel 64.027060, -22.070652. Courtesy of i8 Gallery.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1280\" \/><span style=\"font-size: small;\"><strong>Hreinn Fri\u00f0finnsson<\/strong><\/span><strong style=\"font-size: small;\">\u00a0<em>House Project,<\/em> <em>Third House<\/em>, 2011 stainless steel 64.027060, -22.070652. Courtesy of i8 Gallery.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">S\u00f3lon, to add another layer to the project, is a character set in 1912 in the novel \u2018\u00cdslenskur a\u00f0all,\u2019 (\u201cIcelandic Aristocracy,\u201d published in 1938 by \u00de\u00f3rbergur \u00de\u00f3r\u00f0arsson. Using the story of S\u00f3lon, the artist made an inquiry into the boundaries of space, an inquiry that has continued to unfold in different iterations. The work continuously shapes to its environment through dematerializing by making an inversion of the surroundings or by mirroring them. In my conversations with his assistants, their perspectives of the artist become a metaphorical practice in the exterior of the house of S\u00f3lon looking in at the character of the artist known as Hreinn Fri\u00f0finnsson. His assistants are the outside looking in (from the inside).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Styrmir \u00d6rn Gu\u00f0mundsson, former assistant<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Hreinn is on the phone with the whole world. He just sits at home and calls whoever he\u2019s working with. When he\u2019s producing work or a show, I feel like he is a puppet master.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Or maybe it&#8217;s better to put it this way: he will get an idea that has something to do with astrophysics, let\u2019s say, and then he\u2019ll call an astrophysicist in Iceland that he knows and asks him how something works and why some object is turning like that. And then he\u2019ll get an idea for something physical so he calls a carpenter in The Netherlands and starts building something, and then calls the assistants, and then he calls the gallery. He calls a hundred times in one day and then everything sort of falls into place. I\u2019ve always been very fascinated by his way of working. I think it is interesting that he isn\u2019t working in the studio himself but he makes these correspondences, directing this whole process of conceptual art production.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">At the end of the day, it is all Hreinn. That\u2019s the fascinating thing is that he is so brilliant at capturing ideas that otherwise would just fly by. Often people all around him are, in a way, reflecting on something that he\u2019s talking about and then this idea of a work comes into the open. He\u2019s really good at capturing these ideas going on on the telephone, calling immediately the next day someone who starts working on it. So, what I meant to say is that I think there are a lot of people around him that play a big role in his way of making things that in the end, of course, are his creation. Even though he is a conceptual artist working with found things and readymades, there is still this Fri\u00f0finnsson style.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">He is definitely a super storytelling artist and he uses text especially in his 1970\u2019s work. It was really what he was busy with just combining text and images, but also Icelandic ghost stories, so he\u2019s really a good example of an artist who is big with storytelling, even though later it is maybe less. His work is not literary, but when I am with him in his house, he is always making up stories, rhymes, even raps, especially after I was infecting him with my rap practice. He was immediately coming up with some rap lyrics because he comes from that old Icelandic tradition. So he has that really in him, deeply rooted, to make up rhymes and that\u2019s really amazing.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I think Hreinn is a sorcerer at times in his works. He doesn\u2019t know physics on an expert level but he uses it in this way that you describe that is like a kind of sorcery. He is even like a sorcerer in the way his phone conversations is him just picking up the phone, without even having an agenda, and he becomes like a bit-torrent that is just downloading as long as he\u2019s reaching out to people. I imagine it\u2019s like a remedy for any artist to just be active making phone calls and emails and slowly having everything assemble into a whole show.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-9355 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/artzine.is\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/HF02-e1580633331746.jpg\" alt=\"HREINN FRI\u00d0FINNSSON A View in A (1), 1976 black and white photograph 52.5 x 64.5 cm. Courtesy of i8 gallery. \" width=\"1920\" height=\"1449\" \/><strong style=\"font-size: small;\">HREINN FRI\u00d0FINNSSON A View in A (1), 1976 black and white photograph 52.5 x 64.5 cm. Courtesy of i8 gallery.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Hrafnhildur Helgad\u00f3ttir, current assistant<\/strong><b>\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">There is a word that kept coming up during the process of making the publication, which ended up not being in the publication, a word that was often used to describe Hreinn: <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Titlaflakk<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. Literally, <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">titla <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(title) <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">flakk <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(wanderer).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Being busy with the archive and the chronology of his work we were really going through his whole career, and for people who are working with the installation, we saw how some titles return again and again. In the 1980s, everything was untitled which was very popular then, but very annoying for registration.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">For example, <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Above and Below<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> hasn\u2019t been with a title for ages until now. It&#8217;s almost like a work can be seen as being in process until the title comes. In the publication, you can even trace the title of the works and how they changed. For a lot of artists, this is part of their practice. It was nice to put it in the book as an official thing. Sometimes I\u2019ll come to the studio and suddenly there is a title where there wasn&#8217;t one before. Sometimes just one word inside of a title has changed, such as \u2018my\u2019 sky or \u2018your\u2019 sky.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Also, all the people who work for him have nicknames for works as well. For example, a video work at KW made in 2018\/2019 of Hreinn\u2019s hand and a candle. Like many of his works, it is an illustration of scientific discovery. The staff nickname is \u2018reaching out\u2019 but the official title is: <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Reaching out: left-hand shadow sent on a journey to infinity through the window in the small room. <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Once you project the shadow in space there is nothing keeping it in the room\u2026. It is on a trajectory to infinity. Words chosen have to carry the meaning. It took months to choose what the title was going to be and moving between English, Icelandic, and Dutch. It was almost like knitting.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The title of the show,<\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> How to Catch a Fish With a Song<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, comes from a series of text works by Hreinn called <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Clues<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> because they are actually sentences taken from NY Times crossword puzzles. Hreinn doesn\u2019t know the answer to the puzzle.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-9356 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/artzine.is\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/HF03-scaled-e1580633309685.jpg\" alt=\"HREINN FRI\u00d0FINNSSON Seven Times, 1979 seven black and white photographs each: 29,8 x 20,3 cm. Courtesy of i8 Gallery. \" width=\"1920\" height=\"1252\" \/><span><strong><span style=\"font-size: small;\">Hreinn Fri\u00f0finnsson<\/span><\/strong><\/span><strong style=\"font-size: small;\">\u00a0<em>Seven Times<\/em>, 1979 seven black and white photographs each: 29,8 x 20,3 cm. Courtesy of i8 Gallery.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Halla Einarsd\u00f3ttir, current assistant<\/strong><b>\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">He is fluid with words, but also a bit greedy. For example, if he liked a title he would put it on several things and as time went by he would neglect the fact that he had already used it. Greedy in a funny way, but at the same time very ready to cancel out the fact that he has already used it. He can also be controversial with himself which was a funny wall to hit constantly as we were gathering things for the publication. We came across the fact that he is writing his history with this book, so there is a constant struggle because with some works, which is also perfectly his decision, but works he didn\u2019t like to take out of the canon but the editors liked it. So it was a constant back and forth process.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">He basically had to trace his life from the 1960s, emotionally as well. It was amazing how much he remembers and is very quick to remember. It\u2019s this self autobiographical work with the fence that began my archiving part. It\u2019s basically that he walked, when he was 24 or 25, since he comes from the west of Iceland on a farm, for a summer job for two years where he was guiding a fence that had been set up because of the sheep disease. It was an insane distance, like 50 km every other day. He would walk one distance and his brothers would drive and pick him up. He made this work in 2014\/15. I was reading these yearbooks from a newspaper around this area and from then on it escalated and I started to scan his archive which was loads of work. As Hrafnhildur probably mentioned, he hasn\u2019t been consistently updating the archive. I picked up where Styrmir had made his own logic and it wasn\u2019t until then that I realized how great it is to have many people in on the logic of organizing it.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>Conclusion<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Styrmir observes that Hreinn is on the phone with the whole world like a distant puppet master, or a &#8222;bit-torrent that is just downloading as long as he&#8217;s reaching out to people.&#8220; Hrafnhildur observes Hreinn as being a &#8216;title wanderer&#8217;, never settling on a name for an artwork and letting it drift throughout his career, signifying his careful attention to words to specify artworks or to connect them to otherwise disparate works. Halla observes the importance of having many people involved in the logic of organizing an archive. Hreinn is writing his own history, being controversial with himself, writing his own history, being &#8216;greedy&#8217; with words and wanting to use it everywhere. Hreinn&#8217;s assistants give us a different perspective on the artist, clues to the artist that are poetic, indirect, and perfectly befitting, just as the title for the show at KW was borrowed from a NY Times Crossword puzzle clue for which the answer is irrelevant. The clue to the answer contains all the poetry and points of departure needed, like a Koan for which there is no answer but the thought processes involved in trying to solve it are the answer itself.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\n<p style=\"text-align: right;\"><em>Erin Honeycutt\u00a0<\/em>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Cover picture: Hreinn Fri\u00f0finnsson, <em>House Project Fourth House<\/em>, 2017, polished stainless steel, 255 x 325 x 195. Courtesy of i8 gallery.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: right;\">\n<p style=\"text-align: right;\"><em><\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: right;\"><em><\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: right;\"><em><\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: right;\"><em><\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: right;\"><em><\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: right;\"><em><\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: right;\"><em><\/em><\/p>\n<p>[\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Recently on view at KW Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin from September 28th, 2019 to January 5, 2020, was a retrospective of Hreinn Fri\u00f0finnsson\u2019s work To Catch a Fish with a Song: 1964 \u2013 Today. It was organized in partnership with Centre d\u2019Art Contemporain Gen\u00e8ve where the exhibition was on view from 24 May\u2009\u2013\u200925 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":9352,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"on","_et_pb_old_content":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Recently on view at KW Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin from September 28th, 2019 to January 5, 2020, was a retrospective of Hreinn Fri\u00f0finsson\u2019s work <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">To Catch a Fish with a Song: 1964 \u2013 Today. <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It was organized in partnership with Centre d\u2019Art Contemporain Gen\u00e8ve where the exhibition was on view from 24 May\u2009\u2013\u200925 August, 2019, coinciding with a new book on the artist\u2019s career launched in Geneva and Berlin.\u00a0<\/span><\/p><p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Befitting the intricate storylines of Hreinn Fri\u00f0finsson\u2019s work, which often contain notions of time interwoven with revelation and concealment, I decided to talk to three of his current and former assistants about the artist instead of taking the usual research routes into the gathering information. I realized while walking around the exhibition <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">To Catch A Fish With Song <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">at KW<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0that, although I had been writing about Icelandic art for a few years now and had even interned at his gallery, I8, in Reykjavik, for a year, the artist had somehow slipped from my focus.<\/span><\/p><p><img class=\"alignnone wp-image-9357 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/artzine.is\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/HF04-scaled-e1580633409504.jpg\" alt=\"HREINN FRI\u00d0FINNSSON Correspondence, 1991-2014 envelopes, paper 14 x 18.2 cm. Courtesy of i8 Gallery.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1443\" \/><\/p><p>HREINN FRI\u00d0FINNSSON Correspondence, 1991-2014 envelopes, paper 14 x 18.2 cm. Courtesy of i8 Gallery.<\/p><p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">An opportunity to study his work closely never arrived, and perhaps, I never felt the push as he is such a mythological figure in the Icelandic art world, like a godfather of Conceptual art in Iceland. He is often mentioned in context with the brothers Sigur\u00f0ur and Kristj\u00e1n Gu\u00f0mundsson of his generation, who studied in Holland in the 1970\u2019s and returned to Iceland, mixing the international modes of conceptual art with a distinctly poetic Icelandic gesture, really using our connotations with words as a work in itself in this fluid play with words. I always got this sense that there was a level of respect that you just have for the Eddas and poetry in general when you grow up in Iceland. I always thought about these old stories about how poets in the Sagas didn\u2019t use swords or, but if you wanted to fight you would have a battle with words as though they were real physical weapons themselves. What these magic words are I have often thought about, especially in making a connection to a specifically Icelandic style of conceptual art.\u00a0<\/span><\/p><p><img class=\"alignnone wp-image-9353 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/artzine.is\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/HF01.jpg\" alt=\"HREINN FRI\u00d0FINNSSON House Project, First House, 1974 Mixed media. Courtesy of i8 Gallery. \" width=\"1921\" height=\"1282\" \/><\/p><p>HREINN FRI\u00d0FINNSSON House Project, First House, 1974 Mixed media. Courtesy of i8 Gallery.<\/p><p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Perhaps I never wanted to penetrate the elusive figure of Hreinn and rather wanted to keep him in this lofty and unreachable place of inexplicable poetry that was somehow tied into a tradition of poetry that the language just oozes, in the way it adjusts to situations and objects, like a phenomenological lens of the world in itself. This is very much an outsider of the language looking in, although I speak it enough to get by, but not with an inner sense for the language. I don\u2019t have a feel for words. This was the golden halo I had wrapped Hreinn inside, faithful to the truth or not, at least it was conceptual. I was familiar with Hreinn through the exhibition and book called <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Homecomings<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> edited by Annabelle von Girsewald and <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Cassandra Edlefsen Lasch, which looked at<\/span> <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Georges Perec\u2019s <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Esp\u00e8ces d\u2019espaces<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> (<\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Species of Spaces<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, 1974) in the context of Hreinn\u2019s <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">House Project <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">which also launched in 1974. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0In talking to his assistants, I saw the form of my gaining knowledge of the artist as being akin to this most sustaining narrative work of his career, the <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">House Project <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(1974 - ), which began as a gesture that would successively take many different forms.<\/span><\/p><p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cIn the summer of 1974, a small house was built in the same fashion as S\u00f3lon Gu\u00f0mundsson intended to do about half a century ago, that is to say, an inside-out house. It was completed on the 21st of July. It is situated in an unpopulated area of Iceland, and in a place from which no other man-made objects can be seen. The existence of this house means that \u2018outside\u2019 has shrunk to the size of a closed space formed by the walls and the roof of the house. The rest has become \u2018inside\u2019. The house harbors the whole world except itself.\u201d (1 Hreinn Fri\u00f0finnsson, <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">House Project: First House, Second House, Third House<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> (Crymogea, Reykjav\u00edk, 2012).)<\/span><\/p><p><img class=\"alignnone wp-image-9354 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/artzine.is\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/HF06-scaled-e1580633348453.jpg\" alt=\"HREINN FRI\u00d0FINNSSON House Projcet, Third House, 2011 stainless steel 64.027060, -22.070652. Courtesy of i8 Gallery.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1280\" \/><\/p><p>HREINN FRI\u00d0FINNSSON House Project, Third House, 2011 stainless steel 64.027060, -22.070652. Courtesy of i8 Gallery.<\/p><p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">S\u00f3lon, to add another layer to the project, is a character set in 1912 in the novel \u2018\u00cdslenskur a\u00f0all,\u2019 (\u201cIcelandic Aristocracy,\u201d published in 1938 by \u00de\u00f3rbergur \u00de\u00f3r\u00f0arsson. Using the story of S\u00f3lon, the artist made an inquiry into the boundaries of space, an inquiry that has continued to unfold in different iterations. The work continuously shapes to its environment through dematerializing by making an inversion of the surroundings or by mirroring them. In my conversations with his assistants, their perspectives of the artist become a metaphorical practice in the exterior of the house of S\u00f3lon looking in at the character of the artist known as Hreinn Fri\u00f0finnsson. His assistants are the outside looking in (from the inside).\u00a0<\/span><\/p><h4><b>Styrmir \u00d6rn Gu\u00f0mundsson, former assistant\u00a0<\/b><\/h4><p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Hreinn is on the phone with the whole world. He just sits at home and calls whoever he\u2019s working with. When he\u2019s producing work or a show, I feel like he is a puppet master.<\/span><\/p><p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Or maybe it's better to put it this way: he will get an idea that has something to do with astrophysics, let\u2019s say, and then he\u2019ll call an astrophysicist in Iceland that he knows and asks him how something works and why some object is turning like that. And then he\u2019ll get an idea for something physical so he calls a carpenter in The Netherlands and starts building something, and then calls the assistants, and then he calls the gallery. He calls a hundred times in one day and then everything sort of falls into place. I\u2019ve always been very fascinated by his way of working. I think it is interesting that he isn\u2019t working in the studio himself but he makes these correspondences, directing this whole process of conceptual art production.\u00a0<\/span><\/p><p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">At the end of the day, it is all Hreinn. That\u2019s the fascinating thing is that he is so brilliant at capturing ideas that otherwise would just fly by. Often people all around him are, in a way, reflecting on something that he\u2019s talking about and then this idea of a work comes into the open. He\u2019s really good at capturing these ideas going on on the telephone, calling immediately the next day someone who starts working on it. So, what I meant to say is that I think there are a lot of people around him that play a big role in his way of making things that in the end, of course, are his creation. Even though he is a conceptual artist working with found things and readymades, there is still this Fri\u00f0finnsson style.\u00a0<\/span><\/p><p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">He is definitely a super storytelling artist and he uses text especially in his 1970\u2019s work. It was really what he was busy with just combining text and images, but also Icelandic ghost stories, so he\u2019s really a good example of an artist who is big with storytelling, even though later it is maybe less. His work is not literary, but when I am with him in his house, he is always making up stories, rhymes, even raps, especially after I was infecting him with my rap practice. He was immediately coming up with some rap lyrics because he comes from that old Icelandic tradition. So he has that really in him, deeply rooted, to make up rhymes and that\u2019s really amazing.\u00a0<\/span><\/p><p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I think Hreinn is a sorcerer at times in his works. He doesn\u2019t know physics on an expert level but he uses it in this way that you describe that is like a kind of sorcery. He is even like a sorcerer in the way his phone conversations is him just picking up the phone, without even having an agenda, and he becomes like a bit-torrent that is just downloading as long as he\u2019s reaching out to people. I imagine it\u2019s like a remedy for any artist to just be active making phone calls and emails and slowly having everything assemble into a whole show.<\/span><\/p><p><img class=\"alignnone wp-image-9355 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/artzine.is\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/HF02-e1580633331746.jpg\" alt=\"HREINN FRI\u00d0FINNSSON A View in A (1), 1976 black and white photograph 52.5 x 64.5 cm. Courtesy of i8 gallery. \" width=\"1920\" height=\"1449\" \/><\/p><p>HREINN FRI\u00d0FINNSSON A View in A (1), 1976 black and white photograph 52.5 x 64.5 cm. Courtesy of i8 gallery.<\/p><p><b>Hrafnhildur Helgad\u00f3ttir, current assistant\u00a0<\/b><\/p><p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">There is a word that kept coming up during the process of making the publication, which ended up not being in the publication, a word that was often used to describe Hreinn: <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Titlaflakk<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. Literally, <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">titla <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(title) <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">flakk <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(wanderer).\u00a0<\/span><\/p><p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Being busy with the archive and the chronology of his work we were really going through his whole career, and for people who are working with the installation, we saw how some titles return again and again. In the 1980s, everything was untitled which was very popular then, but very annoying for registration.\u00a0<\/span><\/p><p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">For example, <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Above and Below<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> hasn\u2019t been with a title for ages until now. It's almost like a work can be seen as being in process until the title comes. In the publication, you can even trace the title of the works and how they changed. For a lot of artists, this is part of their practice. It was nice to put it in the book as an official thing. Sometimes I\u2019ll come to the studio and suddenly there is a title where there wasn't one before. Sometimes just one word inside of a title has changed, such as \u2018my\u2019 sky or \u2018your\u2019 sky.\u00a0<\/span><\/p><p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Also, all the people who work for him have nicknames for works as well. For example, a video work at KW made in 2018\/2019 of Hreinn\u2019s hand and a candle. Like many of his works, it is an illustration of scientific discovery. The staff nickname is \u2018reaching out\u2019 but the official title is: <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Reaching out: left-hand shadow sent on a journey to infinity through the window in the small room. <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Once you project the shadow in space there is nothing keeping it in the room\u2026. It is on a trajectory to infinity. Words chosen have to carry the meaning. It took months to choose what the title was going to be and moving between English, Icelandic, and Dutch. It was almost like knitting.<\/span><\/p><p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The title of the show,<\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> How to Catch a Fish With a Song<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, comes from a series of text works by Hreinn called <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Clues<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> because they are actually sentences taken from NY Times crossword puzzles. Hreinn doesn\u2019t know the answer to the puzzle.<\/span><\/p><p><img class=\"alignnone wp-image-9356 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/artzine.is\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/HF03-scaled-e1580633309685.jpg\" alt=\"HREINN FRI\u00d0FINNSSON Seven Times, 1979 seven black and white photographs each: 29,8 x 20,3 cm. Courtesy of i8 Gallery. \" width=\"1920\" height=\"1252\" \/><\/p><p>HREINN FRI\u00d0FINNSSON Seven Times, 1979 seven black and white photographs each: 29,8 x 20,3 cm. Courtesy of i8 Gallery.<\/p><p><b>Halla Einarsd\u00f3ttir, current assistant\u00a0<\/b><\/p><p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">He is fluid with words, but also a bit greedy. For example, if he liked a title he would put it on several things and as time went by he would neglect the fact that he had already used it. Greedy in a funny way, but at the same time very ready to cancel out the fact that he has already used it. He can also be controversial with himself which was a funny wall to hit constantly as we were gathering things for the publication. We came across the fact that he is writing his history with this book, so there is a constant struggle because with some works, which is also perfectly his decision, but works he didn\u2019t like to take out of the canon but the editors liked it. So it was a constant back and forth process.<\/span><\/p><p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">He basically had to trace his life from the 1960s, emotionally as well. It was amazing how much he remembers and is very quick to remember. It\u2019s this self autobiographical work with the fence that began my archiving part. It\u2019s basically that he walked, when he was 24 or 25, since he comes from the west of Iceland on a farm, for a summer job for two years where he was guiding a fence that had been set up because of the sheep disease. It was an insane distance, like 50 km every other day. He would walk one distance and his brothers would drive and pick him up. He made this work in 2014\/15. I was reading these yearbooks from a newspaper around this area and from then on it escalated and I started to scan his archive which was loads of work. As Hrafnhildur probably mentioned, he hasn\u2019t been consistently updating the archive. I picked up where Styrmir had made his own logic and it wasn\u2019t until then that I realized how great it is to have many people in on the logic of organizing it.\u00a0<\/span><\/p><p><strong>Conclusion<\/strong><\/p><p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Styrmir observes that Hreinn is on the phone with the whole world like a distant puppet master, or a \"bit-torrent that is just downloading as long as he's reaching out to people.\" Hrafnhildur observes Hreinn as being a 'title wanderer', never settling on a name for an artwork and letting it drift throughout his career, signifying his careful attention to words to specify artworks or to connect them to otherwise disparate works. Halla observes the importance of having many people involved in the logic of organizing an archive. Hreinn is writing his own history, being controversial with himself, writing his own history, being 'greedy' with words and wanting to use it everywhere. Hreinn's assistants give us a different perspective on the artist, clues to the artist that are poetic, indirect, and perfectly befitting, just as the title for the show at KW was borrowed from a NY Times Crossword puzzle clue for which the answer is irrelevant. The clue to the answer contains all the poetry and points of departure needed, like a Koan for which there is no answer but the thought processes involved in trying to solve it are the answer itself.<\/p><p>\u00a0<\/p><p style=\"text-align: right;\"><em>Erin Honeycutt<\/em><\/p>","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[786,785,783,610,784],"class_list":["post-9351","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artzine-in-english","tag-halla-einarsdottir","tag-hrafnhildur-helgadottir","tag-hreinn-fridfinnsson","tag-styrmir-orn-gudmundsson","tag-to-catch-a-fish-with-song"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Hreinn Fri\u00f0finnsson\u2019s assistants on the outside looking in (from the inside) - artzine.is<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/artzine.is\/?p=9351\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"is_IS\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Hreinn Fri\u00f0finnsson\u2019s assistants on the outside looking in (from the inside) - artzine.is\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Recently on view at KW Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin from September 28th, 2019 to January 5, 2020, was a retrospective of Hreinn Fri\u00f0finnsson\u2019s work To Catch a Fish with a Song: 1964 \u2013 Today. 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