Contemporary Icelandic Art: Hafnarhús Art Museum

Artists often feel compelled to exaggerate their separateness to the point of eccentricity. Consequently artist products take on to a still greater degree the air of something independent and esoteric. --John Dewey (1)

Erró: Graphic Art 1949 - 2009

The most accessible art exhibited at the Museum is the result of three years of work researching and collecting the entire collection of the artist Erró, one of Iceland's famous artists next to Björk. Erró, probably better known in Europe (the Pompidou museum has two pieces), worked in virtually every medium and subject from art history to social and cultural commentary.

Magnús Pálsson
The sound of a Bugle in a Shoebox: Performances 1980 - 2013

The artist saw how absurd it was that a person made of marble was perceived as a sculpture but a person made of flesh and blood was not. And he maintained: I am a sculpture. When I move I am a mobile sculpture and when I make a sound I am a sound sculpture
-– Magnús Pálsson

Combining visual art, theater, and sculpture this artist believed in the non-segregation of art forms, combining them to create a more complex message. This exhibition is a retrospective of Pálsson's work in the last two decades. And although the language barrier prevented a deep understanding of the content of the installation, it was clear that the work touched on social and political issues and blurred boundaries between art forms. For example, in the video below, the sculpture in the foreground, called I Stand Alone, is a casting made in an attempt to capture the experience of music. Pálsson studied theater design and his work attempts to represent the aspects of experience that are part of the world: sounds, words, feelings, time, movement, the space between things, stories and thoughts. (2

Teaching: The Craziest Branch of Art
As a teacher at the Icelandic College of Arts and Crafts, Pálsson came to see teaching as an important aspect of his own artistic production and had an exhibit called: Teaching: The Craziest Branch of Art.
And I love this, Pálsson says:
"Strange as it may be, art has in the last few decades ceased to be about craft and facility and has become instead a field of general creativity. Art has become a branch for creative ideas in general. The separation between the traditional art forms has been eroded and it has even become difficult to separate creative work in science from creative art. Chess can hardly be distinguished from art. Poems become visual art and visual artworks become music." (2)

1. Dewey, J. (2005). Art as experience. New York, NY: Perigee
2. The Sound of a Bugle in a Shoebox program. Reykajavik Art Museum: Hafnarhús

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Theresa Himmer: All State
Sound Composition

Using the recorded repetitive sounds of an elevator, and remixed as a six hour composition, the sound composition attempts to put the listener in a place between objective space and manipulated space. Installed in the Hafnarhús's own elevator (of only two stories) the composition layers with the elevator's unique sound scape and the inhabitant's own sounds and dialog while traveling between floors. Although the experience or riding an elevator is certainly an ordinary one, it was made a bit more extraordinary with the additional sound track.

Interior courtyard of the Hafnarhús art museum. No it's not an old jail--it's the old harbor office and warehouse.

Interior atrium space, Hafnarhús art museum. The atmosphere IS as the brochure says: fresh and provocative!