Reykjavík Grapevine - 07.12.2018, Blaðsíða 20

20 The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 21— 2018

Two other
performances follow, mapping
out an intriguing exploration of the
interplay between language, percep-
tion, body and emotion. The perfor-
mances are part of Haraldur’s large
scale solo exhibition called “Spec-
trum.” Not only a retrospective, it’s
also a beautiful, personal and authen-
tic investigation of what it means to
be human.
THE ENGLISH GARDEN
Haraldur’s works necessarily include
unpredictable elements of chance
and contingency, effectively inviting
the unexpected and the intuitive. It’s a
method he has trusted throughout his
life. “I’m interested in the labyrinth
of perception—how people navigate
through the cultural architecture of
our world like an invisible building,”
Haraldur explains later, as we settle
down to talk in his studio.
Far from the serious and authori-
tative persona he had adopted at
the performance a few days earlier,
he triumphs now with charm. His
studio is scattered with stacks of
paper, finished or unfinished works,
illustrating his process of working
on many different pieces simulta-
neously. “It’s a bit like an English
garden,” Haraldur says. “There are
piles of ideas, drawings, written
notes, archives, catalogues… they’re
visual stimuli.”
Little treasures sit scattered
around in unexpected places. All in all,
I feel like I’m ruthlessly penetrating
the space “where the magic happens.”
Haraldur, however, is beaming with
warmth and openness.
A WITNESS OF LIFE
“I see myself as a receiver,” he contin-
ues. “I receive messages and work
with them. Maybe it’s a little New
Age.” He chuckles. “I am a witness of
life.”
Trusting his intuition more than
anything else, Haraldur says that he
often doesn’t know exactly what he’s
doing during the process of creation.
When the piece is finished, however,
he’s able to put it into context and to
connect it to one of the four notions
he’s continuously working with—body,
perception, emotion and language. He
describes this work process with the
proverb “one is wise after the event,”
which is to say that the meaning and
purpose of a piece only becomes clear
after it has been created.
When he’s selecting pieces for a
show, Haraldur sometimes intro-
duces an element of chance by
employing a tarot-based system,
wherein he lets the pieces combine
to create their own narrative, or
by randomly opening a page of the
dictionary and constructing the show
around a word he finds. “It is like
a child who is asked to connect the
dots on a paper,” he explains. “If the
dots don’t have numbers, different
people will make different forms out
of them.”
SILENT,
SINCERE, SLEEPY, SOFT
A perfect example of this intui-
tive work process is a piece called
“Emotional Wallpaper,” which occu-
pies the entrance hall to “Spectrum”
at Kjarvalsstaðir. Two walls form a
tunnel that the visitor passes through
to enter the exhibition space; each one
bears words for different emotions,
one in Icelandic and one in English,
lined up in alphabetical order.
The idea came in a moment that
Haraldur describes as an “out-of-body
experience” when he found a brochure
that was part of an mental health
awareness campaign. One page was
a list of different emotions. He intui-
tively lined them up in alpha-
betical order, not knowing
what he was doing at
first. The resulting
piece has now been
exhibited many times
internationally, and
translated into many differ-
ent languages.
It unites universal emotions
felt everywhere in the world in one
artwork and at the same time shows
how humans have developed nuanced
words for emotional subcategories—
such as “grumpy,” “tetchy” or “irri-
tated”—but still sometimes fail to
express exactly what they’re feeling.
The piece reveals that commonly felt
emotions connect people, but also
shows that finding a shared vocabu-
lary to express or explain them can also
create
a sense of alien-
ation and distance.
LINGUISTIC REVELATIONS
Language has interested Haraldur
since the earliest stages of his life. He
was born in Finland, but he doesn’t
speak the language as his family sailed
to Iceland when he was just two years
old. He is, however, a man of many
nations, having studied in France
and Germany; he was honoured with
the title of “Meisterschüler” (a title
given to pupils of a
Masters class with an
above-average perfor-
mance) from the arts
academy in Düsseldorf.
Today, Haraldur speaks both French
and German. He says that learning
another language was "a revelation,"
and references to language are scat-
tered throughout his oeuvre.
Haraldur recalls being particularly
intrigued by how people used gestural

waiting audi-
ence by a thick rope.
Suddenly, Haraldur appears and
takes one of the guests by the arm, and
as his assistant lifts the rope, Haral-
dur guides her to the seat that he has
apparently chosen for her amongst a
series of theatre-like rows. His assis-
tant gently grabs me and guides me to
another chair. This silent yet authori-
tative ritual continues until everyone
is seated.
TRACING FACES
Haraldur and his assistant put up large
red banners to create a “stage”—in
reality, just an unused space in the
gallery—and the artist finally breaks

the silence. “I
need two people who are
very close to each other,” he says,
mysteriously. A young, curious couple
tentatively volunteer.
What follows is the perfect example
of how Haraldur works. The two are
told to stand in opposite corners of
the room, one facing away from the
other. Then Haraldur massages the
tops of their heads, and asks them to
each visualise a colour. Next, the two
are asked to put their face sideways
on a piece of paper in sequence, while
the artist draws the outline of their
profiles. As the finale, he puts the two
drawings on top of each other, showing
the combined image to the volunteers
like a doctor presenting an X-ray. The
audience watches in reverent silence
as the couple receives the artwork as
a gift, looking astonished as they walk
back to their seats.

I am stand-
ing in Kjarvalsstaðir
museum, where Haraldur Jóns-
son, one of Iceland’s most renowned
visual artists, celebrated the open-
ing of his mid-career retrospective,
“Spectrum,” just a few weeks ago.
It’s after the museum’s opening
hours and, of course, it’s already
dark outside. A small group of
people stand in the East wing of the
building, anticipating the evening’s
performance.
A seating area is separated from the
▲ Galaxy (2002)
Tunnel (2008)
▶
Aucoustics
(1990)
◀
Spectral
Rupture (2017)
▲
Anatomy Of
Feelings (1998)
Emograms (2011-2014) ▼
Ringing (2018)