Where Do We Go From Here

Tanya Bonakdar Gallery is pleased to announce 'Where Do We Go From Here', a group show of emerging Icelandic artists featuring Gabriela Fridriksdóttir, Hjordis Arnadottir, the Icelandic Love Corporation, Ragnar Kjartansson (a.k.a. Rassi Prump), and Hreinn Fridfinnsson. Together, they represent a diverse cross-section of the dynamic Icelandic art scene. The conscientiously naïve art of Gabriela Fridriksdóttir lures the viewer into a fantastic, near mythical realm, replete with gentle beasts, monster shadows, magicians, shamans, large-eyed protozoa, and rather sinister characters that bridge the elusive gap between the fictive and the real. Drawing on a particularly Icelandic spiritualism, Fridriksdóttir has developed an extensive and transcendent personal cosmology, eloquently formalized in painting, drawing, sculpture, video and performance. Working in yet another media, Fridriksdóttir is widely recognized for her production of the cover art for Björk's recent albums. Here she will present a number of works on paper, together with a selection of painting and sculpture. Fridriksdóttir will be the sole representative of Iceland at the 2005 Venice Biennale. Hjordis Arnadottir's multimedia practice demonstrates a sophisticated conceptualism centered on the convergence of man and nature. Often, she employs highly technical methods to create works that evoke perceptions of natural phenomena. For this exhibition, she has produced a large-format photographic diptych of staged figurative imagery, titled ‘Still Life with Girl and Leaf’. The Icelandic Love Corporation is an all-female collaborative crew operating in performance, video, photography, and installation art. They work to breakdown the distance between art and audience, and projects often result in participatory events or public offerings. Posing as a corporation, the infrastructure of capitalism, the ILC prompt a lighthearted questioning of our current state of affairs, and suggest their humor and love-fueled happenings as alternatives to the sometimes chilling realities of modern consumer culture and information society. This show will feature their photographic series 'Where do we go from here?' from which the exhibition takes its title. The series is based on a film script the group wrote in 1999 that describes a journey, a disaster and a rescue played out in the fantastic Icelandic landscape. The Icelandic Love Corporation formed in 1996 and is currently comprised of Sigrún Hrólfsdóttir (1973), Jóní Jonsdóttir (1972) and Eirún Sigurdardóttir (1971). Ragnar Kjartansson (a.k.a Rassi Prump) is a musician and visual artist receiving much acclaim in Reykjavik´s underground scene. He works primarily in performance, yet also produces sculpture and painting, all of which have theatricality as a common denominator. Various forms of aggression, masochism and romanticism are recurrent themes in Kjartansson’s work. Throughout his relatively brief career Kjartansson has moved in the borderlands between various art forms. He has experimented extensively with visual art, music and theatre, working with, for example, the group Trabant, which explores the boundaries between electronic rock and performance. Here, Kjartansson presents ‘Death and the Children’, a projected video that records the reactions of a group of children who confront Death (Kjartansson in costume) in a cemetery. One of Iceland's most established conceptual artists, Hreinn Fridfinnsson produces works celebrated for their elegant simplicity and poetic observations about human perception. Fridfinnson's work for this exhibition consists of a set of nine clear glass shelves with reflective mirror elements (silhouettes of the artist's hands) inlaid on their surfaces, installed in a staggered formation on one of the gallery's walls. The light of the space is both refracted by the glass of the shelves and reflected by the mirror material, projecting luminous wavering wing-like shapes on the wall behind. Fridfinnsson represented Iceland at the 1993 Venice Biennale.

Pressetext

Where Do We Go From Here
Kuratoren: Ragnar Thorisson, Hjordis Arnadottir

mit Gabriela Fridriksdottir, Hjordis Arnadottir, Icelandic Love Corporation, Ragnar Kjartansson (a.k.a. Rassi Prump), Hreinn Fridfinnsson