Reykjavík Grapevine - 08.04.2016, Síða 38

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Art Boring and Non-Boring Art
Get Bored With
Baldessari At Nýló
by REBECCA SCOTT LORD
John Baldessari is a revered concep-
tual artist who has inspired dozens
of other big names. Now, his touch
will be felt all the way here in Ice-
land at the opening of Nýló’s exhibi-
tion ‘Being Boring’ on Friday, April
8. Three students from the Iceland
Academy of the Arts (Listaháskóli)
will be recreating his classic 1971
piece ‘I Will Not Make Any More
Boring Art,’ in which he asked stu-
dents at the Nova Scotia College of
Art and Design to write the titu-
lar phrase endlessly on the gallery
walls. This performance will be-
gin at the opening, which starts at
20:00, and will continue for the du-
ration of the show.
The exhibition as a whole will
touch on the theme of boredom, a
feeling familiar to just about every-
one. If you’ve ever spent hours end-
lessly refreshing your Instagram
feed or scrolling again and again
over the same stories on Facebook,
you’ve felt that dreaded boredom
that seems so inescapable. The art-
ists whose work is a part of this
show have forced themselves to re-
ject the endless scrolling, and to be
productive in the face of it.
The title itself implies that bore-
dom is crucial to the act of making
art. It comes from a quote by Zelda
Fitzgerald’s in her 1922 essay “Eulo-
gy on the Flapper”: “She refused to
be bored chiefly because she wasn't
boring.” The works on display are
the result of this refusal, the prod-
uct of people staring down that
boredom and turning it into art. In
addition to John Baldessari’s work,
the works of Phil Coy, Lucy Clout,
Emma Hart, William Hunt, Sam
Porritt and Peter Wächtler will also
be a part of the exhibition, which is
curated by Gareth Bell-Jones and
Gemma Lloyd.
So if you can tear yourself away
from your boring Instagram feed
which still hasn’t changed since you
checked it for the twentieth time
five minutes ago, you should go
experience some curated boredom
at Nýló's project space Núllið. The
show runs until May 1.
SHARE: gpv.is/baldess
38The Reykjavík GrapevineIssue 4 — 2016