Reykjavík Grapevine - maj 2021, Qupperneq 20

Almar Atlason’s Party
Funeral!
Beauty & sufferin! coalesce in a colourful daze
Words: Hannah Jane Cohen Photos: Art Bicnick
Exhibit
’Funeral at the beach’ by Almar
Atlason will be open until May 16th.
“The paintings were all done on
La Réunion, which is an island in
the middle of the Indian Ocean,
just off the coast of Madagascar,”
Almar Atlason says, motioning
to the series of large, colourful
works that dot the walls of Mutt
Gallery behind him. He’s in the
midst of his newest exhibition,
entitled ‘Funeral at the beach’,
which will be up at the gallery
until May 16th. “It’s about as far
away as you can get from here on
a European art grant,” he laughs.
Every time, I try...
“The amazing graphic designer
Gréta !orkelsdóttir taught me
about chromophobia—the fear
of colour—where everything that
is not black, white, grey, or beige
is savage art. It’s less refined and
worse,” Almar explains. “This
exhibit as a whole is just experi-
menting with colours, taking away
all the fanciness. What can you
do with simple lines and colour
without the malerei, as they say in
German? How can you create and
portray feelings?”
Laughing, he points to an ex-
plosive, bright yellow and orange
painting entitled ‘Manneskja
me" kaffi’ (‘Human With Coffee’),
hanging on the left wall of the gal-
lery. A boxy, prismatic work that,
Almar explains, has been the most
popular of the exhibition so far, it’s
an effort that instantly transports
the viewer into a hopeful world of
blazing sunlight and warmth—
potentially representative of the
island on which it was painted. On
it—as you might have guessed—a
chunky figure walks towards you
holding a coffee.
“This is a good example of what
I’m trying to do with portraying
feelings and probably the only pos-
itive emotion in the exhibition,”
Almar says. “I have a friend and
whenever I see him, I know I’m
safe—if only for 15 minutes. So I
wanted to capture that feeling of
just seeing someone on the street
and feeling like you’re at home.”
Along with this focus on feel-
ings, this exhibition also continues
Almar’s ongoing obsession with
symbols. “I have this extremely
weird fascination with symbols,
so many letters, words, and obvi-
ous symbols work their way into
these works. It’s not my doing, it
just happens,” he shrugs.
Grinning, he walks towards a
painting in the back room of the
gallery, ‘Stóll, barn og #rjár man-
neskjur’ (‘Chair, Baby and Three
Humans’). At the bottom, writ-
ten in stocky, rumpled handwrit-
ing, are the lyrics of “Everytime”
by Britney Spears. It ’s consid-
ered Britney’s most personal and
painful work. In the video, she
famously commits suicide due to
the pressures of fame. “That is the
best song that has ever been writ-
ten and has been featured in all my
exhibitions,” Almar says; his voice
jovial in spite of the dark song. “It
is the height of beauty.”
An exploration of pain
Because under the surface, like
“Everytime”, Almar emphasises,
the exhibition deals with pain. In
fact, he’s reluctant to dive deep
into his works and even asks if we
are allowed to discuss certain top-
ics in the Grapevine. He asks this
because the one he will openly dis-
sect is ‘Tvær manneskjur og veg-
gfó!ur’ (‘Two Humans and Wall-
paper’), which was inspired by the
drawings that children make at
police stations when they are de-
scribing domestic violence. “The
hands are always super big,” Al-
mar says starkly, explaining the
skewed proportions of the figure
in the work. “And there’s maybe a
beautiful sun and a dandelion and
then a haphazardly drawn bru-
tally violent scene in the corner.”
Looking at the art and you’d never
guess it was inspired by some-
thing so tragic—it’s a cartoonish
work, but it’s this dichotomy that
is completely representative of the
absurd world Almar creates. One
where pain is found in both trivial
pop songs and the horrors inside
police stations.
Because Almar’s art—even
when it’s bright and beautiful—al-
ways contains an undercurrent of
suffering. And these feelings are,
he explains, one of the primary
factors behind not only this exhi-
bition but also his pilgrimage to La
Réunion.
"If I kill myself 1,000 times in
my head every day, why not do it
somewhere where it is not cold
and horribly expensive? Why not
have a party funeral every night?”
he asks, referencing the name of
the series with both a shrug and a
smile. “This has always been one of
my fascinations—the beauty in the
sadness.”
Arti8 Gallery
Tryggvagata 16
101 Reykjavík
info@i8.is
t: +354 551 3666
www.i8.is
CALLUM INNES
15 April - 29 May 2021
Open daily
10h00–17h00
artmuseum.is
#reykjavikartmuseum
Kjarvalsstaðir
Flókagata 24
105 Reykjavík
+354 411 6400
Eilíf
endur-
koma
Eternal
Recur-
rence
27.03.–19.09.2021
Jóhannes S. Kjarval
&
Eggert Pétursson
Egill Sæbjörnsson
Einar Garibaldi
Gjörningaklúbburinn
Guðrún Einarsdóttir
Guðrún Kristjánsdóttir
Hrafnkell Sigurðsson
Katrín Elvarsdóttir
Katrín Sigurðardóttir
Kristján Guðmundsson
Ólafur Elíasson
Páll Guðmundsson
Ragna Róbertsdóttir
Ragnar Kjartansson
Sigurður Guðjónsson
Steina
Sorry, your invitation must have gotten lost in the mail
'Manneskja me! ka"'