PRESS RELEASE

Gunnar Örn
The Journey Home

Stalke Gallery is pleased to announce the opening of an exhibition featuring works by Gunnar Örn.

Gunnar Örn (b. 1946) is regarded as one of the most significant Icelandic artists, and his works are represented in Icelandic art museums as well as the Guggenheim Museum in New York. A self-taught artist, he began exhibiting in the 1970s. His works were previously showcased at Stalke Gallery 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 connection between humans and the environment. In recent years, he has developed a more abstract and spiritual style. His expression is less expressionistic and surrealistic, leaning more toward a meditative style where colors and forms create serene and dreamlike imagery. The colors are soft pastel tones, light, and transparent. A recurring motif in his works is a white oval, often smaller in the foreground, resembling either a face or a reverse footprint, thus oscillating between Örn's traditional motifs: human and nature. Gunnar Örn finds inspiration in meditation and from impressions from a trip to Greece, which left him with the sense of traveling back in time to his own creation. He describes this experience as a feeling of returning home, to the universe's origin—hence the exhibition's title—but also as a sense of being part of a larger whole, a harmony with the world.

Gunnar Örn's works appear very open, allowing interpretation to depend on the viewer's own perspective and what they bring to the artwork. Thus, one can see the works as pure abstractions or variations on light and landscape.

Gunnar Örn's scope is not limited to being a creative artist; he also runs the exhibition space Kambur on Iceland and has served as a curator for several exhibitions at other museums.