Reykjavík Grapevine - 08.11.2013, Blaðsíða 21

21
“A painting on a white wall
is just a painting. A painting
on these old shitty walls is
more than that.”
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After years of study,
strings of awards and
having led kitchens of
some of Reykjavík’s most
esteemed restaurants,
Gústav still sees him
self as just a kid from
up north, with a life-
time passion for fish.
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Art
if not more than painting in a city
like Edinburgh.”
Equally inspiring was the response
from the residents of the town.
“I feel like my work is really
coming into its own here because
I’m engaging with the communi-
ty,” he says. “It’s not just me doing
my own art and saying here, this is
me, on you.”
Reimagining a play in
Reykjavík
The wall he’s working on now was
commissioned after the building’s
owner saw Guido working on the
painting of the grandfather’s face.
Guido was offered a free place to
stay and materials in exchange for
murals on three of the building’s
walls. A lift was hired for Guido to
access all reaches of the wall and
his mainstay spray paints from
Spanish Montana were shipped
in from the UK. They are the only
paints he uses.
“I’m just real picky now with
this,” he says. “I’ve worked out
what works and what doesn’t.” He
can spend weeks mixing the co-
lours through a process of freez-
ing a can of one colour, puncturing
a hole in it, and then submersing it
into the can of another colour.
Presented with three, blank,
wall canvases, Guido went to
the Museum of Photography and
found a series of photos from a
1961 production of the play ‘No
Exit.’ The painting he’s working
on now of a woman in the dress
dancing with a man is the actress
Helga Löve. Her daughter actu-
ally discovered Guido painting her
mother by happenstance. “A week
or so ago this woman came by
and asked me what I was making
and then suddenly said, ‘That’s my
mother! ’” Guido explains.
When Guido finishes all three
walls, he’ll go back to Australia for
the Southern Hemisphere’s sum-
mertime and the opportunity to
make some money in order to con-
tinue travelling and painting his
murals. He’s interested in return-
ing to the north to paint in Green-
land, though he’s open to nearly
anywhere a building is crumbling
or a tagged space needs reclama-
tion. “I’ll just go to wherever the
art takes me,” he says. “I’m totally
at the mercy of it.”
Go see his pieces on Vesturgata.
Nanna Dís