Hlynur Hallsson (1968) stundaði myndlistarnám á Akureyri og í Reykjavík og framhaldsnám í myndlist í Hannover, Hamborg og Düsseldorf. Hann hefur tekið þátt í um 120 samsýningum og sýnt verk sín á yfir 70 einkasýningum meðal annars í Listasafni Reykjavíkur, Nýlistasafninu, Listasafninu á Akureyri, hjá Kuckei+Kuckei í Berlín, Kunstraum München, hjá Chinati Foundation í Texas og hjá Overgaden í Kaupmannahöfn. Hann var safnstjóri Listasafnsins á Akureyri 2014-2024 og hefur einnig unnið sjálfstætt sem sýningastjóri. Hlynur hefur kennt myndlist við Listaháskólann og Myndlistaskólann á Akureyri. Hann hefur einnig gefið út nokkrar bækur og bókverk.

Verk Hlyns snúast gjarnan um samskipti, tengingar, texta, tungumál, landamæri, stjórnmál, hversdagslega hluti og hvað við lesum úr aðstæðum. Hann vinnur gjarnan með texta, teikningar, ljósmyndir, gjörninga, hluti, vídeó og innsetningar.

The first of Hlynur Hallsson´s trilingual spray-works arose in the year 2002 for an exhibition in Overgaden/Copenhagen. In these, Hallsson united elements of text, statements and the fleetingness of modern-day art. His reciprocal multilingualism does not represent a mere translation, however, but rather – in this case – with a discursive entree with a cultural difference: Islandic – the artist’s mother tongue – stands for every original human language. German may well be considered vicarious for all elaborated languages of the “poet and thinker”. And in any case, there is no way round the international lingua franca of English: the global lingua franca per se. The fleetingness of the works is achieved, on the one hand, by using spray paint – a material that has been dismissed for quite some time as having no artistic expression whatsoever. And, on the other hand, by the fact that, in every exhibition gallery, space must be found for the New. Nothing really endures in the halls of the art galleries; all works find themselves in a constant flow and drift from one place to another, whilst some pass away, only to be resurrected elsewhere.

When he occupies himself with the subject of “the word as image”, he shows his exhibition Þetta er það – Das ist es – This is it (Kuckei+Kuckei, 2015), a work that apparently deals with the basis of written language. His alphabet of the Icelandic language consists of 32 characters and unites the familiar with the alien. The familiar characters offer the viewer the sense of recognition, while the unknown letters bear within themselves the promise of something new. The work is like an invitation to grasp both the origin and the home of these symbols. It is a return to the very core of things, comparable with his earlier photo-text works, which serve in places as a fragmented diary and, at the same time, as their antithesis. Here, too, Hallsson uses spray paint to emphasise the element of transience.

Jill Leciejewski