Letter from Reykjavik.
By Cedar Lewisohn
Spotlessly clean, surrounded by beautiful mountains and sea that appear to be visible from wherever one stands, Reykjavik is a truly majestic city. Though temperature-wise, it can be on the cool side, as far as the art goes, it’s hot to trot. I was there to take part in an exhibition at Klink & Bank. The gallery has been running for a few years but has recently expanded massively due to the donation of a sixty thousand square foot building in the downtown 105 district. The building now houses around a hundred and twenty studios of artists and musicians, and a new gallery space. The buzz in Klink & Bank is fantastic, masses of space with all the energy of a creative atom bomb.
The original gallery space was a collaborative project by Paul McCarthy and Jason Rhodes, who filled the gallery with around 50 large butt plugs designed for sheep. Why? Who knows, but it was a proper treat to see Rhodes and McCarthy’s scruffy creations sticking out like sore thumbs at the site’s rather prim and proper main shopping street.
The night before our opening at Kink & Bank, Lou Reed was playing a concert at the National Stadium. The show I was in included works by Patricia Ellis, Vinita Hassard, Ulli Knall, Tonico Lemos Auad, Goshka Macuga, Caroline McCarthy, Eline McGeorge, Jeroen Offerman, Saki Satom, David Waterworth, and Neil Zakiewicz. The opening went well, disrupted only once by a large group of opera singing Icelandic ladies who stopped in to give a recital. Most artists in the show made work on site that reacted in some way to the setting. Neil Zakiewicz carved out two chunky Supermen from a large piece of industrial foam. The figures carried a long strip of plywood on their shoulders and seemed to have as much to do with a Soviet era work ethic as they did with Warholian ideas of numbing repetition.
The show’s curator, Olof Bjornsdottir (AKA Woollen Maiden) exhibited a painting of a rare breed of rhinoceros. The postcard-sized image could have brought a tear to the toughest man’s eye: Colored in the grey, green and white pallet of Luc Tuymans, the work was accompanied by an impassioned piece of Icelandic narration that told the story of this dejected creature on the edge of extinction.
After our show was done and dusted, it was time to check out the competition. The Reykjavik Art Museum had an exhibition of etchings by Goya. Taken from the book "Los Caprichos", the series of 80 prints explores themes of cruelty, witchcraft and human isolation. First published in 1799, these works have previously been described as the most influential set of graphics in the history of Western Art. Juxtaposing the utterly grotesque with glimpses of youthful beauty, Goya’s work is as entrancing today as it ever was. Perhaps most enjoyable in this show were the six images of animals undertaking human pursuits such as reading or playing cards. Apparently, these are typical visual renditions of ancient Spanish satirical charm.
In the upstairs galleries of the Reykjavik Art Museum there was a mini retrospective of works by Icelandic artist ErrÙ . The paintings provided a running visual commentary on scenes ranging from Communism, and the Second World War, to the moon landing and Woody Allen’s angst. Painted in a realist cartoon style, the images borrowed from the language of comic books for sauce material and style. Distinctly Pop in tone, the show was reminiscent of artists such as Robert Rausenquist, with whom ErrÙ had worked briefly in the early sixties. ErrÙ ’s highly politicized approach to subject mater gives a truly European stance on world events, however. Though many of the works where large scale and used complex layering of images, I found the smaller paintings to be the more successful works. They had a bold simplicity which allowed them to breathe and function like the comic strips by which they were inspired.
The high cultural climate in Reykjavik is a relatively new development. Long before the scene received official endorsement artists were staging shows in their homes for lack of decent exhibition spaces. Twenty years down the line, The Corridor Gallery is still going strong in the apartment of painter Helgi Porgils Fridjonsson. The current show featured the work of Berlin based artists Gunnar Reski, Dirk Bell, Juliane Solmsdorf, Christoff Keller and Natalie Dj�rberg. Bell and Reski both showed dark and eerie figurative drawings that sat in stark contrast to the domestic environment of the apartment gallery. Curated by Icelandic Artstar Egills, there was a general current of personal and political dissent that ran thought the show.
Looking at Art is all very well, but when your somewhere with as much natural beauty as Iceland, with its hot springs and vast, moon surface-life landscapes, you have give your self a few days off and go and explore the real world.
Wish you were here.
