Opening: Saturday, 21.09.2019, 16h-18h
21.09 – 26.10.2019
The title of the exhibition, It’s not true is purposefully enigmatic and as such is highly appropriate for the work of Elvar Már Kjartansson and Litten Nystrøm.
Both of these artists have chosen to make Seyðisförður their home. The town has a long tradition of attracting artists from across the world to work and occasionally stay. This exhibition is the result of the ongoing conversations that occurs between artists in such a community of creative individuals. Elvar and Litten did not collaborate to create this exhibition, but they did spend time together discussing their own work and finding themes and interests which resonated with one another.
The exhibition sees two artists respond to materials and processes in different but sympathetic ways. Litten Nystrøm creates delicate works, often using textiles dyed and marked using pigment ground from local rocks. This type of alchemy is both traditional and experimental, and is a type of unpacking of geological time. The use of these elements seems to be a way to connect to an absolute, something outside of human time, which the artist transforms and breaks down, into pigment which can delicately alter the colour of a fabric.
Elvar Már Kjartansson is similarly interested in such transformative processes. He has a strong affinity with wood, as he also works as a carpenter. His approach to these materials is to enact a process or action upon a material. The gesture can be aggressive, such as the splitting of a piece of rowan timber. Between that physical action and material object, Elvar is liberating the non-physical remnant. Such as the particular sound created in that action, giving rise to ghosts of a form and process.
Brief Artist Biographies
Elvar Már Kjartansson was born in Reykjavik, Iceland, in 1982. In 2009 he started to split his time between Reykjavík and Seyðisförður, and moved here permanently in 2012. His work has been shown across Iceland as well as in exhibitions in Paris, France; Prague, Czech Republic; Bruno, Czech Republic; and Vienna, Austria. In 2016 Elvar was part of the project, Frontiers of Solitude, a collaboration between Skaftfell and institutions in Norway and the Czech Republic, which considered the contemporary transformation of landscape. Under the name Auxpan, Elvar releases experimental music and has participated in concerts in Iceland, France, USA, United Kingdom, Italy and Belgium.
Litten Nystrøm (b. 1977 Aarhus, Denmark) studied at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts School of Design in Copenhagen from 2003 to 2008. Litten moved to Iceland following an artist’s residency at Skaftfell in 2011. In 2016 she founded FOSS, in Seyðisförður, a publishing platform for limited editions, artists books and multiples, with artist Linus Lohmann. She has exhibited internationally having been included in projects at Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen, Denmark; Centre for Contemporary Art, Aarhus, Denmark; Iaspis, Stockholm, Sweden; and most recently a solo exhibition After Memory, at Art Link’s Suldanha Suite, Fort Dunree Ireland in 2019.