Atlantica - 01.06.2004, Side 55

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52 A T L A N T I C A52 A T L A N T I C A BARS / ART
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Unlimited opening hours and the price of beer often keep Reykjavík’s revellers at home till
past midnight. All very well if you want to come crawling home at dawn on your hands and
knees (or someone else’s). For those who want early evening atmosphere and still be tucked
up with cocoa by twelve, here’s Atlantica’s short guide to bars that warm up well before the
witching hour.
Metamorphic Kaffibrennslan has wine offers Thursday, beer tasting Friday, an international
crowd and more brands of bottled lager than you can shake a MasterCard at.
With great value fish and vegetarian options and a kitchen that stays open till 10, Vegamót
boasts a lively chatty vibe till the dj kicks in at midnight. If no nonsense boozing’s your bag
then jump next door to Ölstofan. The rowdy, good natured crowd get stuck in early and feng
shui fittings mean you’re never more than six feet from the bar! For laconic laid-back types,
Kaffi List on Laugarvegur hosts regular jazz sessions and radiates urbane poise on two
floors. While away the summer stretch in the evenings out back in Dillon, a haven of down-
at-heel cool with live music and not a repetitive beat to be heard. JB
As part of the Reykjavík Art Festival this spring, the Reykjavík Art Museum at
Kjarvalsstadir will be showcasing two prominent international artists: painter
Francesco Clemente and photographer Roni Horn. Francesco Clemente is one of the
most celebrated artists of his generation. He started his career in Italy as a conceptu-
al artist and had his first one-man show in Rome in 1971. At the end of the 1970s he
began painting and quickly became recognised internationally.
Clemente visited India for the first time in 1973 and has spent long periods there ever
since. He mixes Eastern and Western themes and symbolism in his work and his
remarkable imagery combines the everyday with the exotic in a closely-knit discourse.
Consequently his images, at first familiar and direct, are ultimately mysterious.
Clemente has used the self-portrait very often as a way to explore questions of identi-
ty, ranging from the sexual to the spiritual. However, his art is always open, suggesting
rather than telling.
This exhibition, entitled New Works, presents over sixty works including paintings, pas-
tels and watercolours, all of which have been made in the last three years. This follows
his major retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum in New York and Bilbao (1999).
Photographer Roni Horn has a special liason with Iceland, through her many trips to the
country. She likes to investigate the opposites in the way we perceive things and plays
with juxtaposing forms and movements, in everything from common natural phenome-
na to human facial expressions. This exhibition, titled Her, Her, Her and Her, is made up
of sixty-four one foot square black-and-white photographs printed on paper that are
assembled, quilt-like, into two units hung opposite one another. AMB
From May 20 to August 22 at the Reykjavík Art Museum – Kjarvalsstadir,
Flókagata, 105 Reykjavík.
THIS SIDE OF MIDNIGHT
Forms and Images
WORK BY RONI HORN
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