ARTIST TALK

Bær – A Place

February 9th 2025 at 15:00

Curator Daria Sól Andrews talks to artists of the exhibition Bær / A Place

Markus Baenziger (US), Barbara Ellmann (US), Katia Klose (DE), Jóna Þorvaldsdóttir (IS), Debbie Westergaard Tuepah (CA), Mike Vos (US)

A PLACE presents a group exhibition of six international artists brought together in 2022 during an artist residency at Bær Art Center in Höfðaströnd in Skagafjörður, Iceland. The artists are, Barbara Ellmann, Jóna Þorvaldsdóttir, Mike Vos, Katia Klose, Debbie Westergaard Tuepah, and Markus Baenziger. The exhibition A PLACE, at Listasafn Árnesinga is a sort of second edition and continuing exploration of this original residency experience from 2022, exploring the lasting connections, influences, and new impressions formed in the practices of each artist as a result of this residency and exhibition.

OPENING

Among Gods and Mortals: Icelandic Artists in Varanasi

February 8th 2025 at 15:00

Time, and space in which to work are two essential conditions for creativity. For visual artists, the studio is a sanctuary, a personal realm for contemplation and industry. This exhibition is the result of a project that posed the question: What happens when artists are transported to a studio far away from the comfort zone of the familiar?

Among Gods and Mortals offers a view into the experience of six accomplished and well-established Icelandic artists whose works shown here were conceived in connection with recent stays at Kriti Gallery and Anandvan Residency, in Varanasi, India. Situated in a verdant garden in a private enclave, the residency compound comprises individual studios with sleeping accommodations and a common dining room – all within one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in human history. The residency is at once a workplace and base camp for excursions into the many-layered worlds of Varanasi (also called Banaras), the spiritual city known in the Hindu faith as the “abode of the gods,” with its many temples and shrines devoted to fervent worship. Varanasi is a city of extremes, of the endless parade of life teeming in the streets and the solemn mourning of the dead at the cremation pyres along the sacred Ganges River.

Photographer and writer Einar Falur Ingólfsson was the first of the six artists to travel to Varanasi, in 1999. His friend, the Indian photographer Dayanita Singh, later introduced him to Navneet Raman and Petra Manefeld (gracious hosts and founders, in 2007, of Kriti Gallery), and Ajay Pandey, the learned historian who guides the artist in residence through the city, inflecting the tours with insights into India’s culture. Eventually, over the course of several return visits, Einar Falur got the idea to bring a group of artists from Iceland to Kriti to see what might emerge from their time spent in the holy city.

It is hard to imagine two more disparate landscapes and cultures than those of Iceland and India. On the one hand there is Iceland, located in the sub-Arctic, sparsely populated, geographically and historically remote, and of relative cultural homogeneity; and India, on the other hand, bordering on tropical latitudes, densely populated, ancient, and layered with a complex history at the cross-roads of diverse cultural influences.

The Icelanders who traveled to Varanasi were following in the footsteps of a long line of artists seeking inspiration and enlightenment there. Yet their purpose was not to illustrate or interpret what they found; rather, it was to allow the intense sensorial experience of the travel to India to wash over them, to see where it might lead within their own practices.

Sólveig Aðalsteinsdóttir

When Sólveig traveled to India for the first time, in 2023, she had already been working on drawings that explored the expressive potential of simple calligraphic lines. For much of her time at Kriti she explored the winding streets of the Varanasi, closely attending to the continuum of everyday life, such as the endless linear flow of the Ganges, or the undulating profiles of the sacred Gangatiri cows, which she sketched during her stay. Upon returning home to Reykjavík, Sólveig decided to use a roughly textured hemp paper and India ink to create her 8-panel drawing. She took a course in Chinese calligraphy and trained in the technique of controlling a thick brush to form bold, meandering lines. Seen together the drawings form a horizontal line across the sheets of paper. Later, it occurred to her that the source of the Ganges in the glaciers of the Himalayas rhymed, in a way, with the glacial rivers of Iceland. Her fascination with the ubiquitous cows was another rhyme, connecting the cow divinity of the Hindu tradition with the mythical Auðhumla, the nourishing primal cow in the creation narrative of the Prose Edda. Auðhumla became the title of the series of drawings. A series of sculptures entitled Betula (Birch) is a kind of counterpoint to the two-dimensional, horizontal line drawings. Formed from whittled birch branches and anchored to wooden bases, their delicate lines of the branches rise vertically like tendrils of smoke.

Margrét H. Blöndal

Traveling to India for the first time in October 2024, Margrét also thought of universal archetypes that occur across space, time, and human experience. The energy of Varanasi awakened a reflection onto her own past, mirrored in what she observed around her. “I travelled back in time externally and internally. It was beautiful. It was intense. The wide spectrum of life is accepted, and its bareness is clear or pure or sharp or raw. … The works are made in the midst of sensing the humidity, beauty, intensity, sound, sacredness, and nurture.” The paintings in the exhibition were all created in her Kriti studio over the course of a month. Margrét had brought with her a water-soluble oil paint but was initially unhappy with its consistency. It was only after being given a bottle of Ayurvedic oil for back pain that she tried mixing it with the pigment. Applying it to paper, working on the floor, she discovered that the pigment behaved with the just the fluidity she needed, some brushstrokes leaving a delicate oily bleed along the edges of the lines. “I knew as one knows that this particular oil would be the key into the works and that is exactly what happened.”

Eygló Harðardóttir

Eygló first stayed at the Kriti Residency in 2020, for the past years has been making and exhibiting work influenced by her stay there. As an artist, she is deeply engaged with the elemental sources of materials she uses and has studied both papermaking and the “alchemy” of making paint. For her residency in 2024 she brought with her a set of pure pigments – lapis lazuli, malachite, verdigris, rose madder, turquoise, indigo — acquired in Jaipur, where she also had visited the studio of the acclaimed artist S. Shakir Ali, who offered insight into the miniature painting tradition. “The works I made have a direct reference to this tradition when it comes to material. I used traditional miniature brushes to achieve the delicacy and finesse of the strokes and historical natural pigments from plants, semi-precious stones etc.”

The painting series Raga – Tilbrigði í lit /Colours of Raga was inspired by a concert of raga music that took place one night in the palace next to the Kriti studios, where the musicians and audience sat close together. During the concert Eygló was moved to make delicate pencil drawings using the technique automatism, the process of drawing without glancing at the paper. Raga literally means coloring, or tinging, or dyeing, and it refers to the improvisational aspect of classical Indian music, which is structured along melodic motifs. The experience of drawing in response to the music inspired the circular shapes that form the both the paintings, and a sculpture, Áhrif/Impact, constructed of thin copper sheets, etched with lines.

Einar Falur Ingólfsson

Throughout much of his career as a photographer, Einar Falur has explored notions of time, whether in multi-year projects where he has retraced the paths of earlier photographers and artists to understand how the landscapes they depicted have changed, or when, most recently, he documented the daily changes in the weather over the course of a year. In Varanasi, “I began to think about the deep and fascinating layers of time that can be seen everywhere, whether in the buildings built on top of each other over centuries, in peeling paint layers on house walls, or in culture and human life.” Einar Falur has spent several months in Varanasi over the years, recording the passage of time in two series. There are the “timelines” that comprise color photographs shot with a medium-format camera, where the same view taken at the same angle year after year shows the accretions of change taking place in the textures and colours of the architecture. Another series encompasses video works shot in a specific location and shown on a continuous loop like moving photographs of life in the streets. “In my work I am also continuously in visual discussions with artists and photographers who have both worked in India before me and affected my way of seeing in various ways. And the work is always a diary of my own life as well, one man in the mass of millions passing by.”

Guðjón Ketilsson

A visit to the archeological site at Sarnath in 2023 left a deep impression on Guðjón. Located on the outskirts of Varansi, Sarnath is the sacred site of Gautama Buddha’s first teaching, according to the Lalitastara sutra. The site is notable for its many carved votive stone stupas. “The cylindrical stone forms, each one unique, no two alike, all of which are in their own way abstract images of Buddha, aroused in me associations with some of my earlier works.” In much the same way that Guðjón had explored architectural and human forms in the past, he embarked on a new series of pencil drawings on rough paper that played with the idea of the stupa form, though without directly emulating it. Returning to Iceland, these studies of cylindrical shapes extended to an extraordinary series of wood sculptures made with a lathe, resulting in 25 unique structures, painted in varying shades of saffron and installed on pedestals. The saffron hues “appeared to me literally everywhere in Varanasi. In retrospect, I visualize countless variations of the color. When Indians talk about the color saffron, they are not necessarily talking about one specific color with precision, but the name “saffron” covers all kinds of color tones from pale reddish yellow to orange.” Other works in the exhibition include two large-scale photo collages composed of a vibrant and dizzying array of images taken in the streets of Varansi. These images are compositions, very much inspired by the clear and colorful Indian miniature paintings.

Sigurður Arni Sigurðsson

In his paintings, Sigurður Arni explores the use of shadow in rendering the illusions of receding perspective and three-dimensionality on the canvas surface. In a sense, he challenges what painting is, breaking it down into basic elements where the background of the canvas (the base of the painting) is part of the visual structure and the color surface. During his stay in India, in 2023, his eye was naturally drawn to the sight of bodies on the planar field of the landscape, and to the juxtapositions of both subtle and intense color. “The women cutting grass in the fields were dressed in beautifully woven red and sky-blue silk, in stark contrast to the pale grass. The gardeners in the public parks were elegantly adorned in orange jackets, like blooming summer flowers, while the beggar at the door blended so seamlessly with the clay-colored ground that he was barely visible. One is constantly reminded of these contrasts: wealth and destitution, fertility and barrenness, the magnificence of spirit in craftsmanship and design versus the basest instincts and poorest conditions of human existence, life and death.” The extreme contrasts of India led Sigurður Arni to rethink the canvas, leaving edges bare (unprimed) for the first time to create a kind of frame integrated within the confines of the paintings’ borders. Thus, the images of flat, rectangular fields of color with perforated holes seem to float on the naked canvas. “What is new and intriguing for me in these works is the bareness of the concept. A certain dimension and space are created, which is simultaneously exposed and deconstructed. Something is formed, but what forms it also destroys it at the same time. It builds up and breaks down.”

Curator: Pari Stave

OPENING

Bær – A Place

February 8th 2025 at 15:00

Bær / A Place

Markus Baenziger (US), Barbara Ellmann (US), Katia Klose (DE), Jóna Þorvaldsdóttir (IS), Debbie Westergaard Tuepah (CA), Mike Vos (US)

A PLACE presents a group exhibition of six international artists brought together in 2022 during an artist residency at Bær Art Center in Höfðaströnd in Skagafjörður, Iceland. The artists are, Barbara Ellmann, Jóna Þorvaldsdóttir, Mike Vos, Katia Klose, Debbie Westergaard Tuepah, and Markus Baenziger. The exhibition A PLACE, at Listasafn Árnesinga is a sort of second edition and continuing exploration of this original residency experience from 2022, exploring the lasting connections, influences, and new impressions formed in the practices of each artist as a result of this residency and exhibition.

The artists spent two weeks together at the residency together. A strong connection and a whole formed between these different individuals, and works were created that functioned as a kind of storyline and a connection to the local community. Separate but intertwined artworks were created about each artist’s individual experience of nature, culture and place.

One year later, in summer 2023, an exhibition was presented at the Art Center Bær, showing the works that were produced during the residency period. And now, in this exhibition at Listasafn Árnesinga, A PLACE, presents a blend of works that were included in the previous exhibition, while also presenting new works each artist has developed since this residency. These new works were produced with the residency experience in mind, and we can feel the influence of the natural landscape of Iceland and the community surrounding Bær Art Center strongly in the works.

What connecting themes can be found when six artists, of unconnected and differing backgrounds and localities across the globe, come together in a residency in the remote countryside in Iceland? It becomes inevitable that the stark nature will influence each artist in a commonality across their works, through the connected experience. And when each artist returns to their everyday, how can this experience resonate into their practice?

The artists work with a range of mediums, from photography, sculpture, installation, and painting. There is a strong element of locality to the works, whether photographing local landscapes in Iceland, or utilizing site- specific and found natural materials from specific areas in Iceland in the works. The works still speak strongly together as a whole – what sort of common ground can we see in the practices of these six artists?

Mike Vos, for example, overlays urban landscapes and deteriorated buildings onto scenes of natural beauty across Iceland.

And in the installation by Debbie Westergaard Tuepah, she works with environmentally produced plastic from the area of Hveragerði, local to the town of the LÁ Art Museum, presenting an installation of found and manmade whale bones.

Jóna Þorvaldsdóttir presents conceptual and experimental analogue photography focusing on distinct natural details from the landscape of Höfðaströnd. Katia Klose’´s work explores seaweed from the area, in a vibrant and surreal photographic series. Markus Baenziger collected found materials from around the residency, natural and manmade, using them to create delicate and curious sculptural works. Barbara Ellmann’´s encaustic paintings and abstract sewn drawings reveal the natural elements of Iceland in a topography of movement and shifting tides.

The remote locality is essential to each of the works. From distinct and uncommon backgrounds, the artists were brought together in this moment, producing work together during the residency with the common thread of the influential natural landscape and experience of the Höfðaströnd area.

Markus Baenziger is a Swiss born artist living and working in Brooklyn, NY. He has shown extensively in the U.S. as well as internationally. He is a recipient of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship award, and his work was featured in solo exhibitions at the Edward Thorp Gallery, NYC, the List Gallery, Swarthmore College; the Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery, Haverford College, Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, NYC, and numerous group exhibitions including the Rose Art Museum, the Walker Art Center, the Walton Arts Center, the Yale University Art Gallery, among others. His work has been widely reviewed, and can be found in the collection of the Walker Art Center, MN, and numerous private collections.

My first response to the stunning landscape surrounding Bær was to simply go on walks and take in the experience. Eventually I came across various small pieces of plastic, fragments of fishing nets, and other flotsam washed up at the shore.

I started to collect them together with other materials from nature and created a series of small sculptures. They are inspired by the brightly colored rope that I found absorbed into the ground and entangled with the sea grass, or the small fragments of plastic tossed with the stone pebbles on the shore. I see these works as a reflection on the intersection of nature and the man-made world. They establish a dialogue between the beauty of our natural environment and our forceful positioning within nature, which is constantly absorbing the physical remnants of our presence.

www.markusbaenziger.com

Barbara Ellmann lives and works in New York. She’s exhibited work for forty years at venues including the Katonah Museum of Art, the Parrish Art Museum, Montclair Art Museum, and the Haslla Art World Museum. She has been selected for residencies at Yaddo, the Hermitage Artist Retreat, Haslla Art World Museum, and Baer Art Center. She has also produced public works for the MTA (Metropolitan Transit Authority), the City of Summit, NJ, and the Queens Public Library.

Recording memories of places, through observations and inventions, my work allows recognizable imagery to exist alongside pure abstraction within the same multi-panel installation. This series highlights the natural landscape with a focus on how water shapes not only the geography, but also one’s social, economic, and spiritual experience of life. In Iceland, I experienced a place where nature takes center stage in a way that feels both ancient and alive, thrilling and frightening in its power. A sense of geological time is written into the landscape features. The snow compacted to glacial ice might have fallen there over a thousand years ago, and yet an eruption might bring up lava from the core of the earth and lend new features to the ever-changing contours of the place. My known sense of ground had been a kind of neutral, static constant, whereas the dynamism of the landscape here felt like an inversion of time conflating past and present, a turning of an hourglass, and a startling reminder of interdependence. www.barbaraellmann.com

Katia Klose, born in East Berlin (Germany), lives in Leipzig. She studied graphic design at the Weißensee Academy of Art Berlin, photography at the Academy of Fine Arts Leipzig and photo editing at the Ostkreuzschule Berlin. She has been selected for several residencies in France, Germany and Iceland and got schoolarships in Germany, Australia and Canada. She has shown extensively in the Germany and EU as well as internationally.

Katia Klose photographic work examines reality in all of its sensual and poetic qualities. Natural forms are reconfigured and re-examined when staged by the photographer as her subjects. Through documenting the environment in this way, her images reveal the hidden connections between human existence and nature. The series Sseaweed (the hide) uses seaweed found on the black sand beach around Bær and arranges these specimens so they may seem unreal or surreal. Presented as negatives with varying shades of grey, blue and sienna, the images from the series : iInversive act as a form of disengagement from reality. The mountains are otherworldly, somewhat muted and magical.

www.katiaklose.com

Jóna Þorvaldsdóttir is a fine art photographer based in Reykjavíik who only works in analogue photography, especially in historic techniques in her darkroom. Jóna’´s work is strongly influenced by Icelandic folktales, where hidden creatures and beings lurk, eager to reveal themselves and stir our imagination. This fascination with the unseen, is beautifully reflected in her soft and dreamlike images. Her dedication to black and white analogue photography, allows her to create images that evoke a sense of timelessness and introspection.

Her images often transcend stark reality as she strives to present them from unique perspectives that challenge conventional norms. Employing traditional and alternative photographic processes such as palladium, bromoil and silver gelatine, require meticulous craftsmanship. The sacred space of her darkroom becomes integral to her creative journey, where she immerses herself in the transformation of film into tangible prints. It is within this realm that magic happens, where happy accidents and boundless imagination find their expression.

www.jonaphotoart.is

Debbie Westergaard Tuepah is a Canadian artist working primarily in sculpture. She exhibits internationally and is the recipient of numerous awards. Notable exhibitions include Surrey Art Gallery, The Reach Gallery Museum, Vancouver Art Gallery, and Bellevue Washington’s Sculpture Biennial.

Roaming Bær gave me space to consider the precariousness of the world, collect detritus, and study the detrimental impact of plastics on living organisms. Found plastics bore evidence of degradation into microplastics and nanoplastics, which exist in water, sediments, air, rain, and ice; and the bodies of humans and other creatures. Combined with the discovery of cetacean vertebrae and animal bones, this relationship between plastics and life materialized strongly in my work. In Tender Rituals VI, 3D printed whale vertebrae hover over dark pebbles, but the materials are in question. Bones that seem plastic are compostable and biodegradable, while the pebbles are in fact recycled plastics that are destined for reuse: both are materials of hope from forward-thinking companies. Tender Rituals IV ’s cetacean bones and worn metal fishing floats connect the work to fishing related litter such as nets, while Tender Rituals VII incorporates a degraded fishing float enveloped in an animal bone. Both embody the relationship between plastics and living creatures.

www.debbietuepah.com

Pebbles in Tender Rituals VI were generously provided by Pure North Recycling in Hveragerði.

Mike Vos is a photographer, visual artist and musician from Portland, OR. Drawing inspiration from various literary movements and themes, Vos uses traditional and experimental 4×5 film techniques, multi-channel video, field recordings and instrumentation to craft complex narratives that advocate for the preservation of wild spaces. Constantly pushing the capabilities of film photography, analog video and sound, Vos creates immersive experiences to draw viewers into surreal representations of physical places. Vos has exhibited work and attended artist residencies across the United States, Mexico, Canada and Iceland. In 2024 he was awarded a fellowship with The Sitka Center for Art & Ecology in Oregon and released his debut monograph ‘Somewhere in Another Place’ through Buckman Publishing.

www.mikevos.com

Curator: Daría Sól Andrews.

LUCID DREAMS

February 8th 2025 at 15:00

The experience of being aware that you are dreaming while you are still asleep…..

8th february – 31st of May 2025

Videoworks by 11 artists from India

1. FISH LOVE Gayatri Kodikal 11.27

2. INTERFERENCE Tallur L N 4:00

3. CHILD LOCK Abeer Khan 2.12

4. DEEPEST DEMARCATION Hetal Chudasma 9.52

5. FAR FROM HOME Sabyasachi Bhattacharjee 2.03

6. POLITICAL REALISM Gigi Scaria 3.35

7. THE GHOST TAXONOMY Tushar Waghela 4.57

8. L FOR… Bharati Kapadia 7.01

9. ISOSCELES FOREST Sukanya Ghosh 3.00

10. WATER HAS MEMORY Meera Devidayal 7.49

11. COUNTERFEIT Babu Eshwar Prasad 2.49

Curated by Bharati Kapadia and Anuj Daga

Videocorner

Elísabet Jökulsdóttir reads from her new book.

December 7th 2024 at 14:00

On December 7th; Elísabet Jökulsdóttir will read from her new book, the reading will be in Icelandic.

Guided tour for the exhibiton Organic Circuits

December 7th 2024 at 15:00

On December 7th; Kristín Scheving and Freyja Þórsdóttir will walk to some of the venues included in the exhibition Organic Circuits.

Free event and open to all.

Þórdís Þúfa & Kira Kira

Live music and reading.

November 28th 2024 from 20:00

20:00 Þórdís Þúfa reads from her book: Þín eru sárin

20:30 Kira kira plays new songs from her album: Unaðsdalur

Free event and open to all.

12/21 Long Thursday

November 28th 2024 from 12:00-21:00

Come and enjoy our exhibitions, introduction to products and live music on Thursday 28th when the museum will be open until 21:00.

20:00 Kirakira plays new songs from her album: Unaðsdalur

20:30 Þórdís Þúfa reads from her book: Þín eru sárin

Free event and open to all.

POL IS ART

Polish Culture days

November 9-10th 2024 from 12:00-17:00

POL IS ART

Experience and connections

On the weekend of November 9-10 we are going to hold Polish Creativity and Culture days – POL IS ART and it is to celebrate Poland’s Independence Day on November 11. And with us to organize this is Martyna Hopsa (Harasimczuk), an artist and project manager who lives and works in Hveragerði. We have invited creative individuals and businesses from Poland who are active in Iceland to present their work at the LÁ Art Museum. The main goals of the festival are to promote Polish artists and creatives living and working in Iceland, engage the local community, connect, foster interactions between artists and residents, promote Polish culture, art, and craftsmanship, and celebrate the inspiration that Iceland provides

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Poster is designed by the project manager Martyna Hopsa

and she said about the design:

I have this idea for the logo, inspired both: the museum logo and Polish traditional hand woven stripes fabrics used as blankets and for traditional clothing.

For further information: listasafn@listasafnarnesinga.is

Þórdís Jóhannesdóttir

Artist talk

November 2nd 2024 at 15:00

Even though artist Þórdís Jóhannesdóttir has long used photography as her medium in her art practice she can not be considered a traditional photographer. The photograph is the main material in her works, material she then bends, folds or stretches both literally and metaphorically. The photographs she snapps from everyday life; from other peoples artworks, architecture or nature. The photographs are then used as a basis for further structure of three dimensional art works. The outcome is an artwork that brings forward multiple surfaces that each one reflects light differently and/or making the artwork stretch into the exhibition space and dwell on the borders of two and three dimensiontal works.

Þórdís Jóhannesdóttir studied Fine Arts at Iceland Academy of the Arts; she got her B.a. degree in 2007 and in 2015 she got her M.a. from the same Academy. Alongside her individual art practice she has worked and exhibited in a two people collaborative Hugsteypan. Þórdís has exhibited widely in Iceland in Galleries and Museums.

Sigurður Guðjónsson

Artist talk

November 2nd 2024 at 14:00

Jóhannes Dagsson talkst to artist Sigurður Guðjónsson on Saturday 2nd of November.

Sigurður Guðjónsson is best known for his time-based media works where image, sound and space form an un- broken whole. He focuses particularly on the function of a variety of technical equipment, where the viewer is lured into a world of soothing repetition, rhythm and order, and the boundaries of the human and the mechanical become blurred. Sigurður Guðjónsson represented Iceland at 59th International Venice Biennale 2022 with his installation Perpetual motion, curated by Mónica Bello. Guðjónsson was awarded the Icelandic Art Prize for Visual Artist of the Year in 2018 for his exhibition Inlight organized by ASÍ Art Museum. His work has been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions around the world, in such institutions as the National Gallery of Iceland,Reykjavik Art Museum, Scandinavia House in New York, Frankfurter Kunstverein in Germany, Arario Gallery in Beijing, Liverpool Biennial in the UK, Tromsø Center For Contemporary Art in Norway, Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin, and BergenKunsthall in Norway. He often collaborates with musical composers, resulting in intricate work, allowing the visual compositions to enchantingly merge with the musical ones in a single rhythmic and tonal whole.

Walk up old Kambar with historian Njörður Sigurðsson

October 5th 2024 at 11:00

Historian Njörður Sigurðsson will walk up with participants up old Kambar.

https://www.facebook.com/events/2033594623727815

Ronald Heu

Live Performance

September 28th 2024 at 15:00

In conjunction with our exhibition Organic Circuits we have a live performance by Ronald Heu.

Ronald Heu grew up in the south of Sweden. During his early teens he played in a variety of punk and alternative bands. After high school he studied classical guitar at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama in Cardiff where he graduated in 2002. With one foot in punk and its DIY approach and the other in classical music, he started composing and in 2016 he completed his first film score. The film music became a framework where he could make use of his seemingly contradictory musical background and desire for experimentation.

In 2018 he wrote the music for the multiple award winning Jordanian documentary film Tiny Souls by Dina Naser, which since its premiere in 2019 has been screened worldwide.

Ronald Hue is supported by the Nordic Culture Point, Mobility Fund

Openings on September 14th 2024 at 15:00

Gallery 1 – Sigurður Guðjónsson

Gallery 2 – Þórdís Jóhannesdóttir

Gallery 3 – Group exhibition: Organic Circuits

Anna Líndal (IS), Elísabet Jökulsdóttir & Matthías Rúnar Sigurðsson, (IS), Freyja Þórsdóttir (IS), Heather Barnett (UK), Herwig Turk (AT), Ilana Halperin (UK), Jennifer Helia DeFelice (US/CZ), Magnea Magnúsdóttir (IS), Patrick Bergeron (CA), Pétur Thomsen (IS), Skade Henriksen (NO), Þorgerður Ólafsdóttir (IS).

Gallery 4 – Volvox

Thomasine Giesecke with Jean-Marc Chomaz, Bruno Palpant, Sound by Tom Georgel. (FR/SE)

Gallery 4 – Metamorphosis – At the foot of volcanoes –

Video by Pascale Chau-Huu, Thomasine Giesecke and Tom Georgel.

Video corner – Algorithmic lies curated by Nikos Podias.

(image: Ilana Halperin (UK))

Performance with Elísabet Jökulsdóttir

September 15th 2024 at 11:00 at Varmá

Elísabet graduated from Kvennaskólinn í Reykjavík in 1987. After that she studied screenwriting and has a BA diploma in stage-art from Iceland University of the Arts from 2008.

Elísabet has worked as a journalist, she is an active speaker for the environment and amongst other things she ran for president in 2016. She has received many rewards for her poems, short stories, novels and plays as well as having been nominated for the Nordic Council Literature Prize.

Þetta líður hjá (This too shall pass) is a 12-ton rock of dolerite lava from Mount Núpi. The artist Elísabet had the rock moved to the riverbank of Hvítá. Matthías Rúnar Sigurðsson, Sculptor, carved the seat in it. “It is a seat that stands by the river Varmá, where you can sit if you are not feeling well, then it will all pass by, just like the river,” says Elísabet.

“The artwork is about the friendship and our relationship with nature. And what nature wants to tell us at our weaker moments. And that it’s alright for us to live with our emotions.”

The artist dedicates this work to teenagers.

Blooming Days 2024

August 15th 17:00

Teitur Magnússon

Teitur Magnússon will be ending his tour around the country in LÁ Art Museum during Blooming days in Hveragerði. After releasing a reggae fusion with Ojba Rasta few years ago, Teitur first attracted attention in 2014 with the solo album 27. The album contained psychedelic pop and was followed by the album Orna in 2018 with a good reputation. In 2021, he released the album 33 and it received three nominations and one award at the Icelandic Music Awards.

The event is offered by the town of Hveragerði.

Blooming Days 2024

August 18th 2024 16:00

Mandolín

The band Mandólín will perform at LÁ Art Museum on Blooming Days offered by the town of Hveragerði.

The repertoire includes fun music mixed with slow tunes from different parts of the world. Finnish and Argentinian tango, Lebanese swing dance, klezmer dance and Balkan music and evergreen ballads, some in special tulle costumes for the occasion.

The band Mandólín was founded in a garden shed in Kópavogur in 2014 and has been working continuously since then. The band has performed at numerous concerts and music festivals.

June 15th 2024

15:30

Introduction to the artwork of Gígja Reynisdóttir and workshop.

Artist Gígja Reynisdóttir will be presenting her work and directing a workshop on Saturday, June 15 from 3:30 p.m.

After the presentation of her works, a workshop will be held where guests will have the opportunity to express themselves in creating composite collages and/or drawings of different leaves, dried flowers and golden leaf. The workshop will take approx. 1 hour.

Nature, especially the plant kingdom, is a prominent theme in Gígja Reynisdóttir’s works. She intertwines natural materials and subjects that concern her, but the complexity of human and social aspects is especially important to her.

Gígja graduated with a BFA degree from Academy Minerva in Groningen in 1997 and an MFA degree from Sandberg Instituut in Amsterdam in 2000. She has since lived and worked in the Netherlands.

On the one hand, Gígja’s work is divided into sculptures and collage, and on the other hand, delicate pencil and pastel drawings. Recently, she developed a special technique that allows her to transform leaves into material that can be drawn on.

In her surroundings in northern Holland, Gígja collects various types of leaves for her works, both from the wild but also from garden and indoor plants. The drawings are delicate pencil or pastel drawings, often of birds or animals but also portraits of people.

The plant leaves she chooses as material are often from inconspicuous wild plants that we humans usually pay little attention to.

More information can be found at www.gigjareynisdottir.com

June 15th at 15:00

Artist talk.

Artist talk with Kristinn Már Pálmason May 9th 2024.

Kaþarsis / Gallery 3 / March 2nd – August 25th 2024

Kristinn Már Pálmason shows paintings that are large in size and fizzing with life. Almost in motion, they draw us in like a whirlwind – so much is happening on the picture plane. We see a range of geometrical shapes, manifestations of diverse symbols, and allusions to semiotics of past and present, figurative and abstract drawings, along with some handwritten words, and elsewhere natural shapes. In Kristinn’s paintings the light comes from within and shines outwards. He uses a combination of spray technique, ink drawing and paint to create an ambiguous world of diverse objects and forms that seem to float around each other within the picture plane. Kristinn’s work is very musical, with sharp, gripping swings between crescendo and diminuendo, chaotic rhythm and a turbulent energy that seems to vibrate, making our pupils expand. And underneath is a heavy beat. In these visually complex paintings, chaos is not a force to be tamed but an integral part of a visual work of art. The world of Kristinn’s art is organized and at the same time fragmented, a sort of visual cacophony that has its zone in the overtones of consciousness, like the zone where dreams appear to us.

Kristinn Már Pálmason (b. 1967) lives and works in Reykjavík. His works have been exhibited widely abroad and in most major art museums and art spaces in Iceland. He has engaged in various art related projects and co-founding art galleries in Reykjavík, such as Anima (2006 -2008) and Kling & Bang (from 2003). Pálmason graduated with an MA degree from The Slade School of Fine Art, University College London (1998) as well as studying at the Icelandic College of Art and Crafts (1990-1994).

The Artist wants to thank Artists´ Salary Fund and Visual Art Fund for their support.

June 15th 2024

14:00

Artist talk.

Artist talk with Erla S. Haraldsdóttir on June 15th at 14:00

Gallery 4 – My Mother´s dream – 2nd of March – 25th of August 2024

My Mother’s Dream: The Recent Work of Erla S. Haraldsdóttir

The unconscious text is already a weave of pure traces, differences in which meaning and force are united—a text nowhere present, consisting of archives which are always already transcriptions. Originary prints.

—Jacques Derrida, Writing and Difference (1967)

In Writing and Difference, French philosopher and theoretician Jacques Derrida clarifies his concepts of the trace and the supplement. He speaks of the “unconscious text” as an ideal where meaning and force are conjoined, and yet spectrally absent—file cabinets filled with copies of “originary prints.”

Erla Haraldsdóttir’s autobiographical and autoethnographic project My Mother’s Dream revolves around a dream that her great-great grandmother had when she was a teenager. It consists of a book with the diary entry with which the artist’s great- grandmother records her mother’s dream and of a series of large-format paintings and smaller sketches that illustrate sequences from a kinswoman’s dream from around the year 1858.

The dream unfolds as a series of encounters with “hidden people,” as elves or fairies are called in local Icelandic belief. The book contains a facsimile of the diary entries, a photograph of the artist’s great-great-grandmother and great-grandmother, and translations of the dream into a matrix of languages that Haraldsdóttir has encountered in her lived experience in recent years, namely, English, Swedish, Icelandic, German, and isiNdebele (a Bantu language of South Africa). Dominant and minoritarian languages form a basis for different readings and transcriptions—Derrida’s “originary prints”— and this text of the unconscious is likewise valorized by the artistic process of its translation into pigment on canvas, or paper, or wall. Text and textile merge as family matters, women’s work, and what C. G. Jung would call an archetypical dream that taps into the collective unconscious are coming into focus. The familial and private thus strives towards the collective public and symbolic. But it doesn’t end there, as My Mother’s Dream has a reverse side My Dream, consisting of blank pages that invite readers to record their own unconscious dreamscapes.

The dream deals with birthing: the husband of a “hidden woman”/fairy mother seeks the help of a young girl (the dreamer) for his wife who is going into a difficult labor. The girl agrees to assist and in return is promised the gift of an intricate Icelandic traditional folk costume. But the fairy mother provides an injunction: the girl must never speak of this sequence of events in waking life. Naive as she is, she fails to heed this advice and is visited again later by the furious fairy mother, who takes back the folk costume. This traumatizes the dreaming girl to such an extent that she refuses to undergo confirmation, an important rite of passage into adulthood for Icelandic teenagers. How does the dream end? Twofold: after reconciling with the dreamer, the “hidden woman” tells her a secret blessed word for times of trouble; on her deathbed, the dreamer recounts her dream to her daughter, she did not reveal the secret of the blessed word of the “hidden woman” while retelling the stories of her encounters with her.

The distant, fairytale-like, unconscious material of these dreams is probed for the contents of this exhibition. It presents a new large-format painted diptych of the “hidden woman”/fairy mother before and after the great-great-grandmother incurs her wrath. It also includes a mural that sits between the two parts of the painting. The English translation of My Mother’s Dream appears in a new series of works on paper that are illuminated manuscript pages in seven parts. A large-format painting, My Mother’s Dream, where the dream is recorded as a blown-up illuminated manuscript page, is presented for the second time after an exhibition at Nörrtalje Konsthall in 2021. Additionally, there are several inkjet prints of female reproductive organs merging with Icelandic folk costumes in a variety of colors. Last but not least, Haraldsdóttir is exhibiting for the first time a series of oil paintings of dream sequences and natural landscapes from Iceland in small square-format paintings.

Thus, the pure traces of an original unconscious writing take shape in a painting of the unconscious, an autoanthropology of the unconscious, and a questioning of the self, kinship, womanhood, and language.

Haraldsdóttir studied at the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm and the San Francisco Arts Institute and has a degree from the Valand Academy of Fine Art in Gothenburg, 1998. Born in Reykjavík, she currently lives and works in Berlin and Johannesburg.

Text by: Craniv Boyd

May 18th 2024 16:00

Live music on the International Museum day.

May 18th 2024

International Museum Day.

The International Museum Day 2024 is set to kick off with a captivating theme that highlights the pivotal role of museums in education and research.

LÁ Art museum offers a fun program from 13:00 with family workshop making Kites.

15:00 an introduction to a research project by artist Brynhildur Þorgeirsdóttir, the mountains in Árnes county.

16:00 Live music with Hróðmar Sigurðsson and Ingibjörg Elsa Turchi.

This year’s theme, “Museums for Education and Research,” aims to underscore the significance of museums as dynamic educational institutions fostering learning, discovery, and cultural understanding.

Gabor Palotai (Gabor Palotai Design), celebrated for an award winning avant-garde design philosophy, has lent its artistic prowess to create a visually striking and conceptually profound poster that encapsulates the essence of the theme. The poster, set against a sophisticated black background, features the iconic museum ‘M’ in various vibrant colors, symbolizing the diverse spectrum of knowledge that museums impart to the world. The abstract composition is a visual metaphor for the vast repository of information housed within museums, waiting to be explored and shared.

The International Museum Day, established by ICOM and celebrated annually on May 18th, serves as a global platform to promote the role of museums in cultural exchange and development. Museums worldwide will join forces to organize events, exhibitions, and educational programs centered around the theme, emphasizing the invaluable contribution of museums to society.

Each year since 2020, the International Museum Day supports a set of Goals from the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations. In 2024, we will focus on:

Goal 4: Quality Education – Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all

Goal 9: Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure – Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization and foster innovation.

As museums prepare to engage audiences through a myriad of activities, the International Museum Day 2024 promises to be an enriching and enlightening celebration.

For IMD 2024 we want to invite people to rethink education and imagine a future where knowledge sharing transcends barriers; where innovation unites with tradition. Join us as we explore the wealth of knowledge museums have to offer and, together, build a more informed and inclusive world !

May 9th 2024

14:00

Artist talk.

Kristín Scheving museum director talks to artists Sigga Björg Sigurðardóttir and Mikael Lind on May 9th from 14:00.

Skinnings / Gallery 2 / 2nd of March – 25th of August 2024

The new video installation Skinnings by Sigga Björg Sigurðardóttir and Mikael Lind was created specifically for the exhibition. The installation consists of 30 video pieces and 30 sound works created for 3 projectors and 6 speakers.

Sigga Björg works with both figurative and abstract drawings on paper and also draws straight onto walls. She has made many video works using stop-motion technique, in which every frame of the animation is drawn by hand. The exhibition includes drawings from the process of making the video works, and those drawings could be seen as animations even if they are made with pencil, pen and watercolour on paper. The drawings were created layer by layer and recorded frame by frame, so the connection between the drawings and the video works is indissoluble.

The sound world of the video installation is composed by the electronic musician Mikael Lind, who has worked together with Sigga Björg on a number of video projects in the past years. Mikael interprets the colours and movements of the subject with individual soundscapes characterized by diverse electronic music styles. The sound designs span everything from ambient music and musique concrete to pure techno. Mikael’s sound world works effectively to open up and create space within the overall work. Sigga Björg’s works often bring together figurative line drawings, colourful and parallel worlds that indicate that there are more than five dimensions of perception, and provide insight into magic as well as our potential for weaving more complex patterns of reality than we experience in our own lives, thus tracing our way along unpredictable paths into the future.

Sigga Björg Sigurðardóttir (b. 1977) lives and works in Reykjavík. Her works have been exhibited widely abroad and in all major art museums and art spaces in Iceland. Sigurðardóttir´s works are in the collections of all major art museums in Iceland as well as in art collection in the Nordic countries, Belgium, England, Switzerland and Germany. Sigurðardóttir graduated with an MA degree from the Glasgow School of Art (2004) and a BA degree from the Iceland Academy of the Arts (2001).

Mikael Lind (b. 1981) lives and works in Reykjavík. He has released four LPs as well as numerous digital releases, both independently and in collaboration with others. He has played his music in many concert venues in Iceland and in many parts of Europe. Lind has a Master’s degree in electronic music production from the University of Edinburgh in Scotland.

The Artists want to thank Artists´ Salary Fund for their support.

https://siggabjorg.net

April 25th 2024

14:00

Artist talk.

Artist talk with Hrafnkell Sigurðsson. The event will be in Icelandic but there will be some time in the end of the talk that you can ask questions in English.

Gallery 1 / 2nd of March – 25th of August 2024 / Aerials

Nature is not only encompassing it also resides in us preventing us from distinguishing clearly between outer reality and inner perception. This is why Hrafnkell Sigurðsson is preoccupied with nature as the one who realizes that he belongs to it completely. He pitches his cusped, prominent tents – foreign elements in style of symmetric space laboratories or oriental pagodas – in front of the snow-white surroundings. His whimsicality towards nature is characterized by a provocative boldness whereas the surroundings cannot assume his orderliness and must consent to a position of a neutral background to his staging. Our inner nature is however amply revealed in Buchers´ Duel, a video of two symmetric butchers, holding on to hooks in mid-air as fighting Samurais dressed in pastel coloured freezing plant outfit against a black background, ready to attack one another with long daggers, which however never touch.

Another challenge appeared in 2024 in form of Aerials, as continuation of Freeze Frame, a video loop installation on five LED screens exhibited in Ásmundarsalur, Reykjavik, in 2020. Both series are the result of innumerable climbing to the summit of Mount Skálafell, dating back to 2017, where the snow laid aerials and the sculptor’s supporting iron rods covered in clay seems obvious. The difference is that Hrafnkell is not involved with the modeling but satisfies himself with documenting the attacking snowdrift, the result of nature’s elements thus approaching creation itself yet avoiding any appropriation of its product.

Hrafnkell Sigurðsson (b. 1963) lives and works in Reykjavik. He graduated as Master of Arts from the Goldsmiths College in London, in 2002, after studies at the Jan van Eyck Academy in Maastricht, 1988-1990, and the Icelandic College of Arts and Crafts, 1987. According to himself, he provides the structure on which nature relies, photographs it and processes in a computer, partly assisted by artificial intelligence. The human hand, nature’s elements and digital technology are combined in a complete process where the final result appears in the form of photographic works.

In 2023 Hrafnkell Sigurðsson received the prestigious Icelandic Visual Art Award.

https://www.hrafnkellsigurdsson.com/

Text by: Dr. Halldór Björn Runólfsson

March 2nd 2024

15:00

Four openings

Exhibitors:

Erla S. Haraldsdóttir My Mother ´ s dream

Kristinn Már Pálmason Kaþarsis

Sigga Björg Sigurðardóttir

Hrafnkell Sigurðsson Antenna

On March 2nd we open four exhibitions of accomplished Icelandic artists Erla S. Haraldsdóttir, Kristinn Már Pálmason, Sigga Björg Sigurðardóttir and Hrafnkell Sigurðsson.

They each present new and recent works, some of which are created especially for the exhibitions, only a few have been shown in Iceland before. It is therefore a special honour and delight for the LÁ Art Museum to be able to invite its visitors to enjoy the exhibitions.

The works of the exhibitions are created in different media, originating in various practices. However, they are strongly connected through the artists´ use of symbolism in their approach to make visible that what belongs on the edge of the explainable, the visible and possibly the perceptible, an edge that contains elements that are not obvious at a first glance, just outside of the five senses of understanding and perception most of us define as human senses. It depends entirely on our individual experiences how many dimensions of the senses we consider as our ability to experience the world and ourselves with, and in which ways we enhance and nurture that ability. These important aspects of the human experience form the basis of the colourful and dynamic works of the exhibition and invite museum visitors on a journey at the edge of copious side worlds.

March 2nd 2024

15:15

Performance by Mikael Lind

Mikael Lind is a composer of experimental ambient music, currently residing in Reykjavik, Iceland. He has got three full-length releases under his belt, as well as a number of digital releases, and he recently earned a Master’s degree in electronic music production from the University of Edinburgh.

Mikael’s music is often based around simple themes that gradually evolve into more complex creations, where sounds and textures are given enough space to slowly introduce themselves, expand, and finally be manipulated into something different. There’s a certain minimalism and sparseness in the choice of instruments, but not in how these instruments are treated. A simple piano line might be carefully developed into a full ambient orchestration with the help of electronic techniques of sound manipulation.

Mikael enjoys the cold climate of the North, and gets inspired by symmetries in his environment, as well as by man-made buildings or artefacts that gradually change and deteriorate due to the forces of nature. He finds beauty in both the simple and the sublime, and this is something that his music wants to express. Complexity – when properly understood – is a wonderful thing, but should never be an end in itself.

https://mikaellind.com

Photo: In Mengi 2022. Visuals by Sigga Björg.

22. December from 15:00

Music performance and events in connection with the exhibition May Your Hand Not Hurt.

Saleh Rozati from Iran will perform on the traditional Persian Daf drum to the accompaniment of his own sound performance.

Sufism is the mystical side of Islam and music is used to fall into a trance with dance and thus get closer to God. People are welcome to experience the performance by dancing along.

Free and all welcome 💛

The event is held on the final day of Jakob Veigar Sigurðsson’s exhibition May Your Hand Not Hurt.

22. December 14:00

Artist talk with Jakob Veigar Sigurðsson

May Your Hand Not Hurt.

For the last day of the exhibition we want to invite you to the museum to enjoy artist talk with artist Jakob Veigar Sigurðsson in his installation space, gallery 4.

Jakob Veigar Sigurðsson is an artist from Hveragerði but he lives and works in Vienna. The exhibition is in some ways about his relationship with Iran as he has spent lot of time there in the past and the exhibition is done in collaboration with Shanay Artemis Hubmann and other artists from Iran.

Artist talk

17th of November 2023. At 14:00

Ragnheiður Jónsdóttir.

Ragnheiður Jónsdóttir, who turned nineteen this year, was awarded this year’s Fine Arts Award for her contribution to Icelandic art. She worked mainly in graphics in her younger years and is one of the pioneers of graphic art in Iceland.

The event will be in Icelandic. (but you can also ask questions in English and Alda Rose project manager of education will tell you more).

For more info contact: fraedsla (at) listasafnarnesinga.is

May Your Hand Not Hurt

17th of September 2023, at 14:00

Jakob Veigar Sigurðsson artist talk.

Jakob Veigar will tell museum guests about his installation and the inspiration from Iran.

Photograph: Saleh Rozati.

Cosmos / Chaos

17th of September 2023. At 15:00

Ragnheiður Jónsdóttir – artist and curator talk.

Ragnheiður will walk around the museum with curator Daría Sól Andrews and tell museum guests about her artworks.

Photograph: Jóhanna Ólafsdóttir

Cosmos / Chaos

2nd of September 2023. At 15:00

Ragnheiður Jónsdóttir

Ragnheiður will be 90 years old in July 2023, and to celebrate we are opening a solo exhibition LÁ Art Museum.

Ragnheiður held his first solo exhibition in 1968 and has been working non-stop on art since. Ragnheiður’s work is often about self-deception – blindness – greed – loneliness – restlessness – the environment – our world.

Ragnheiður says that, in her mind, art is a conversation between the artist and the viewer. That the purpose is achieved when she manages to move the viewer.

Curated by Daría Sól Andrews.

The exhibition is supported by:

Museum Council of Iceland and South Iceland Development fund.

May Your Hand Not Hurt

2nd of September 2023, at 15:00

Jakob Veigar Sigurðsson

in collaboration with

Shanay Artemis Hubmann

Jakob Veigar Sigurðsson is an artist from Hveragerði but he lives and works in Vienna. The exhibition is in some ways about his relationship with Iran as he has spent lot of time there in the past and the exhibition is done in collaboration with Shanay Artemis Hubmann and other artists from Iran.

There will be a performance by saLeh roZati / Pourea Alimirzae from 15:00 – 17:00 in gallery 4.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJgU7xtWvF0

Inga Jónsdóttir

Guided tour of the museum collection and the exhibition Cornerstone.

August 13th 2023 at 14:00

Former director of LÁ Art Museum will give a guided tour of the current exhibition Cornerstone. The event will be in Icelandic but there is possibilities to ask questions in English.

The exhibition is supported by:

Museum Council of Iceland and South Iceland Development fund.