Review:

Nature’s Life

The Icelandic painter Gunnar Örn showcases new works at Stalke Galleri

Exhibition:

Iceland’s art history truly began in the 1930s when the country’s art academy was founded. Of course, Iceland had visual artists before then, but the institution helped create a new sense of collective artistic belonging and an independent tradition. However, only a few Icelandic artists have influenced modern art development, even as interest in so-called global contemporary art grows. This has also led to more Icelandic artists, particularly Olafur Eliasson, exhibiting in galleries and museums worldwide.

Insightful Glimpses

Another such artist is Gunnar Örn, who has not yet achieved the same international recognition as Eliasson. However, over his 30-year career, he has represented Iceland at biennales in Venice and São Paulo and sold his major painting The Great Dream to the Guggenheim in New York. While Eliasson lives and works in Berlin, Örn has stayed in Iceland, where he both works and runs his gallery, Kambi, located about 100 km outside Reykjavík.

There are differences between the two artists' depictions of Icelandic nature. Eliasson’s works are clean and almost documentary photographs, while Örn’s are expressively abstract and surreal paintings that clearly draw inspiration from Iceland’s most renowned artist, Jóhannes S. Kjarval (1885–1972). Kjarval is considered a sort of father of the nature-inspired aesthetic that came to define many later Icelandic artists.

The Nature of Dialogue
Kjarval can currently be seen at Gl. Holtegaard, and Örn is exhibiting a selection of his drawings and paintings from the mid-1990s, along with a brand-new series of watercolors, at Galleri Stalke. Together, these exhibitions provide an opportunity to gain a small yet insightful glimpse into the unique spirit—or perhaps nature—of Icelandic art.

Watercolor – In his latest series of works, Gunnar Örn has started using watercolors instead of the oil paints he worked with in the 1980s. Örn pours ink onto paper like a small lake, letting it form into shapes, after which he draws faces and bodies onto it. Shown here: Untitled (1999).

For Örn, nature is the focus of his canvases and paper works. There are no signs of urban civilization, only wild vegetation and, above all, stones and cliffs. In several works, mythological figures and female shapes emerge from the more or less abstract landscapes, which, in some cases, take on a nearly psychedelic character. It feels as though Örn is not just painting landscapes but nature itself, giving it a personal identity.

Gl. Holtegaard has titled its exhibition of Kjarval’s works In Dialogue with Nature, and this dialogue is also highly representative of Örn’s relationship with nature. It is a challenging and ever-changing dialogue—a continuous challenge for both his art and himself.

Stone Faces
Gunnar Örn had his first exhibition in Denmark in the 1970s. After collaborating with a gallery in New York, he returned to Galleri Stalke in the mid-1990s, where he is now showcasing a completely new series of watercolors. These works reflect a new direction from the expressive style he previously cultivated toward a more refined form, often consisting of a face and a solidly colored torso. Örn has inherited Kjarval’s idea of nature’s personality, but in these new works, it becomes more direct—a poetic and human immersion in individual characters, though still with undertones of something peculiar, unapproachable, and almost dreamlike.

In one of the gallery’s side rooms hangs a series of small square canvases where Örn has experimented with faces in gray tones on strong colored backgrounds. Unlike his paper works, these lack eyes, noses, and mouths. Nevertheless, they remain equally effective in their ambiguity, sitting between abstract forms, natural objects, and human faces. Nature’s life is also the life of humans and art.

This perspective on nature forms the foundation of Örn’s art. Nature is impossible to avoid; it is there to be seen, felt, and experienced as a materialization of human and national (sub)consciousness. A reality that connects Icelandic artists to an original mythology and identity, while also opening new perspectives for aesthetic expression.

Gunnar Örn at Galleri Stalke, Vesterbrogade 14A. Until March 4.

By Jacob Lillemoes