Galerie Adler New York is pleased to
present the first New York solo show of Icelandic video artist Sigurđur
Guđjónsson (*1975 Reykjavík, IS) which will open on March 20 and run
through May 17, 2008. The opening reception will be on the March 20, 6-9
pm.
Gudjónsson's works combine the old topos of his native country's Nordic
natural mysticism with the morbid, sinister side of Vienna, the city
where he studied for several years. In his videos, the artist plays on
the deliberately utilized cut and superimposing techniques to seize the
viewer emotionally. But it is especially the equally important
simultaneous interplay of film and sound elements that create an
atmospheric arena.
In “Deathbed” (2006), the run-down sceleton of an old house stands in
the middle of a bewildering cluster of morbid and grotesque conditions
and the attempt of a hooded protagonist to intrude the ruin in the
endless snowcovered wasteland. In the eerie atmosphere, he meets – or
does he? – figures, faceless people who in what might or might not seem
scenes of the past dress their grey, jejune hair in pin curlers and wash
their decaying limbs in red water to the sound of a muted piano’s play.
While Guđjónsson’s videos depict persons acting in specific sites, his
works repudiate a linear narrative or unambiguous legibility. What
remains are physically and emotionally experienced fragments that are
joined to form a cryptic visual and acoustic symphony. Attention is
given to the grotesque actions of the players and the unnoticed
bystander, the viewer, who seems to become a witness to mysterious
rituals.
Cinematic and musical elements are of equal importance in Sigurđur
Guđjónsson’s atmospheric works, to him, sound, vision and cut are
equitable compositorial means on his search for a not so much
intellectual but physically and emotionally perceptible abyss that Freud
called the “Un-homely”. His works’ mystic, quasi-spiritual mood reflects
psychological states on a universal level that, elder than speech itself,
uncaptured in words and rationally unfathomable, introduces the mind to
the borderline it shares with emotion.
Sigurđur Guđjónsson (b. 1975, Reykjavik) lives and works in Reykjavik,
Iceland. He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna and graduated
from the Iceland Academy of the Arts in 2003. The artist has had solo
and group exhibitions all over Europe, in Germany, Denmark, Austria,
Norway, Spain as well as in Russia and China. Currently he is part of
the show “Iceland of the Edge” in the Bozar Center for Fine Arts in
Brussels, one of the most renowned museums in Belgium.
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