Egill Saebjornsson
(2)
Yepp baby, living in Reykjavik is to have
a grandmother that lived in earth-houses and now lives in concrete block
of flat and having all the american movies BEFORE they are shown in Europe.
We are SO UP TO DATE.
And everyone wanted to be here for a while
when Bjorky was doing the big lift-off. But now, WHERE IS EVERYBODY?????
Only Bjorky moved to Iceland but Damon Albarn is hardly ever more to be
seen at KAFFIBARINN (the hottest hottest art bar in Reykjavik). Fifty
years ago we only had like 20 painters in Iceland and half of them were
amateur painters. Today there is more.
50 new kids are taken into the art-school
every year. Now that’s a lot for such a small place. Seven of those go
to multi-media department, eight to painting, seven to sculpture and the
rest to graphic-designing, ceramics, textile and stuff like that. So we
have like 20 new fine-art contemporary artists, what ever that contemporary
means, coming out of the school every year. Mostly on weekends there are
openings in galleries and museums.
Then everybody (100 people) goes let’s
say to the Living Art Museum for an opening of a show with various artists
from Germany, Holland, Sweden and the states. Gabriel Orozco, Louise Bourgeouis,
Orlan, Johan Grimonprez, Felix Gonzales Torres, Dumas ... you know how
it goes! Then every-one strolls down Laugarvegur down to Ingolfsstraeti
8 (which is the only kind of a International gallery in Iceland) to see
an opening of Inga Svala Thorsdottir (Icelandic and lives in Hamburg)
or of Roni Horn or Olafur Eliasson (lives in Berlin) or Elmgreen & Dragset.
One other international gallery was run independently
by Petur Arason and his wife Ragna Robertsdottir, artist.
This gallery was called Second Floor and was in their
appartment on Laugarvegur above the Levis store but Mr Arason is the owner
of this store.
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They did show many artists that otherwise were not shown
in Iceland not even by the large museums. Example: Richard Long, On Kawara,
Donald Judd, Lawrence Weiner. One other guy that runs a clothing store
(running a gallery is not very profitable in Iceland) has a gallery called
Galleri Saevar Karl and he has shows with many contemporary Icelandic
artists.
The oldest gallery is Café Mokka close to Laugarvegur
and almost every artist young or old has exhibited there. It is the grandmother
of all galleries
in Iceland. A great place where NOTHING has changed for the last 30 years
exept for the pictures on the walls.
Young artists are coming up strong. The girls from The
Icelandic Love Corporation were on the cover of SIKSI the nordic art-magazine
followed with an article about those four young girls that are on the
edge of becoming stars in Scandinavia, movingsouthwards.
As well we have a young generation coming from NY and
LA influenced from the two scenes in U.S.A. Most kids still go to Europe
to study their master-degree. We have The Icelandic Culture Enterprise
art.is with the curator Hannes Sigurdsson in the front, doing cross-projects
at a large scale in Iceland. There is no such thing as art-magazines in
Iceland. There used to be but there is nothing today.
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