Stalke Galleri was pleased to announce the opening of an exhibition featuring works by Gunnar Örn.

Gunnar Örn (b. 1946) was regarded as one of the most significant Icelandic artists, and his works were represented in Icelandic art museums as well as at the Guggenheim Museum in New York. A self-taught artist, he began exhibiting in the 1970s. His works had previously been shown at Stalke Galleri in 1997 and 2000. In 1988, he represented Iceland at the Venice Biennale.

In the 1980s, his artistic style aligned with Icelandic traditions, drawing inspiration from nature and the relationship between humans and the environment. In later years, he developed a more abstract and spiritual approach. His expression became less expressionistic and surrealistic, leaning instead toward a meditative style in which colors and forms created serene and dreamlike imagery. The color palette consisted of soft pastel tones that were light and transparent. A recurring motif in his works was a white oval, often smaller in the foreground, resembling either a face or a reversed footprint, thereby oscillating between Örn’s traditional themes of humanity and nature.

Gunnar Örn found inspiration in meditation and in impressions from a journey to Greece, which left him with a sense of traveling back in time to his own origin. He described this experience as a feeling of returning home, to the origin of the universe—hence the title of the exhibition—but also as a sense of being part of a larger whole, a harmony with the world.

Gunnar Örn’s works appeared open and allowed interpretation to depend on the viewer’s own perspective and what they brought to the artwork. The works could thus be seen either as pure abstractions or as variations on light and landscape.

Gunnar Örn’s practice was not limited to his work as an artist; he also ran the exhibition space Kambur in Iceland and had served as a curator for several exhibitions at other museums.

Gunnar Örn at the opening, Stalke Galleri

Gunnar Örn, The Journey Home, installation views, Stalke Galleri, 2004

Back to Stalke Galleri exhibition archive