Reykjavík Grapevine - 09.12.2016, Síða 48

Art Exhibition48The Reykjavík GrapevineIssue 18 — 2016
When BERG Contemporary called
Haraldur Jónsson to commission
an exhibit, he thought of it as
a pregnancy. “I was invited into
a space that didn’t exist,” he
explains. “I was very inspired by
that. It was like a pregnancy. It
shaped the whole exhibition.”
The in-progress nature of the
space fed into Haraldur's thinking
as he started to conceive of his
exhibition. Haraldur is fascinated
by t h e b u i lt env i r on m ent .
“Building is a state of mind,” he
says. “Architecture affects the way
we think.” Along the widest wall in
the gallery are seven colourfully
constructed “floorplans.” On the
floor of the gallery is a pond of
black maps.
Skin deep
Projected across the back of
the gallery is a video from the
opening of the exhibit itself. At
the opening, before the video
had been developed, Haraldur
says that the light beams from
the projector cast skin-coloured
shadows against the wall. “That
was completely unexpected, these
naked shadows.”
In the video he asks for five
volunteers and then narrows them
down using an Icelandic “eenie-
meenie-miney-moe” strategy. The
final volunteer is the covered by a
blanket and led by Haraldur around
the exhibit and then outside the
gallery. The camera trails them
around the block: she is guided
gently by Haraldur, stopping to
process curbs and feel her way
around fences, before being finally
led back into the gallery. Haraldur
sets her where the journey began,
and the blanket is withdrawn
suddenly. At that same moment,
someone snaps a Polaroid photo,
which now hangs framed on the
opposite wall.
“I wanted that moment, the
landscape of her face,” Haraldur
says of the Polaroid. “We can see the
way the perception and experience
is developed on the human face.
It’s a way of getting into the ‘core’:
a ‘moment of truth.’”
Welcome in
It would be hard to find a more
stimulating streetscape than
Reykjavík’s right now. With pits
of potential hotels hollowing out
the blocks and construction work
spilling into sidewalks, Haraldur
has a lot to look at. A lot to take in.
A lot to become. “Iceland is being
produced,” he says, referring to
the construction of its tourist
industry. “Everything has become
set design. The cafés, the hostels…”
he says, with a glimmer of humour
in his face.
“The 66° North campaign ‘On
Location’ is brilliant! Tourists
walking around looking at these ads
are here, ‘on location’ in Iceland,”
he exclaims. “You’re neither inside
nor outside,” he says, and widens
his stance to start jumping across
the invisible border of inside and
outside, “just vibrating between
ex istentia l domain s.” He is
laughing and continues jumping
between the domains. “It’s the
same with social media,” he says.
“You’re there, ‘liking,’ going ‘hi! hi!
hi!’ You want to get closer, but you
never really can.”
“Art is always an opening into
different dimensions. A gateway,”
says Haraldur. He swings his
arms open and welcomes in his
environment, in all its intensity
and subtlety. But Haraldur doesn’t
just open the doors: he builds
them.
SHARE: gpv.is/hj18
Naked Shadows
Haraldur Jónsson at BERG Contemporary
Words PARKER YAMASAKI
Photo TIMOTHÉE LAMBRECQ
I C E L A N D I C R E S T A U R A N T & B A R
Tasty tapas and dr inks by the o ld harbour
T a b l e r e s e r v a t i o n s : + 3 5 4 5 1 7 1 8 0 0 - w w w . f o r r e t t a b a r i n n . i s
Certificate of Excellence
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