Jon Proppe on Sigurdur Arni Sigurdsson.
Much of Sigurdur Arni´s early work seemed to aim at reducing the world to two dimensions. His paintings presented a flush surface on which shapes were arranged in strict formation. They resembled diagrams where all spatial relationships – even perspective – have been projected onto interleaved planes, much as cartographers project the curves and crags of the landscape onto their maps. On such a plane, the ontological properties of the things represented are flattened out as well. Shadows, clouds or bursts of light often occupy quite as much space on the canvas as do the solid figures that perhaps are the actual subject of the painting, which is as much as saying that the picture has no depth. Depth in painting is added though the careful manipulation of light and spatial relationships – this is the painters craft and though some of it is science, much is more akin to alchemy. Sigurdur Arni applies the craft, not to creating the illusion of represented reality, but to explore the possibilities of the planar space itself. The shadow of an object, cast on a wall, is a planar representation and is one of the many perspectives that go to make up the whole of that object. A painting is itself a planar projection onto the canvas and an unpainted circle, allowing the canvas to show through, is an opening onto another plane. Painting the shadow of the circular hole on the canvas underneath then defines the thickness of the interleaved space – in effect, the space between the canvas and the painting. While such concerns could seem quite formal, the in fact produce fresh an engaging paintings that stir the eye and the mind with quite the same energy as do the works of the pioneers of abstraction in the 1910s and 1920s.
Jon Proppe,
2005.
Much of Sigurdur Arni´s early work seemed to aim at reducing the world to two dimensions. His paintings presented a flush surface on which shapes were arranged in strict formation. They resembled diagrams where all spatial relationships – even perspective – have been projected onto interleaved planes, much as cartographers project the curves and crags of the landscape onto their maps. On such a plane, the ontological properties of the things represented are flattened out as well. Shadows, clouds or bursts of light often occupy quite as much space on the canvas as do the solid figures that perhaps are the actual subject of the painting, which is as much as saying that the picture has no depth. Depth in painting is added though the careful manipulation of light and spatial relationships – this is the painters craft and though some of it is science, much is more akin to alchemy. Sigurdur Arni applies the craft, not to creating the illusion of represented reality, but to explore the possibilities of the planar space itself. The shadow of an object, cast on a wall, is a planar representation and is one of the many perspectives that go to make up the whole of that object. A painting is itself a planar projection onto the canvas and an unpainted circle, allowing the canvas to show through, is an opening onto another plane. Painting the shadow of the circular hole on the canvas underneath then defines the thickness of the interleaved space – in effect, the space between the canvas and the painting. While such concerns could seem quite formal, the in fact produce fresh an engaging paintings that stir the eye and the mind with quite the same energy as do the works of the pioneers of abstraction in the 1910s and 1920s.
Jon Proppe,
2005.