Opening February 12, 18:00-20:00, Skaftfell gallery.
Artist talk February 13, 14:00 (in Icelandic)
Guided tour in English Mars 18, 17:00
The exhibition is on view until April 25, 2021. Open Mon-Fri 16:00 – 20:00, Sat-Sun 16:00-20:00.
Entry through the bistro on the ground floor.
The opening and artist talk are taking place in partnership with List í Ljósi art festival. We kindly ask our visitors to follow the Covid-19 safety regulations and the 20 people gathering limit, and to wear a mask.
It can be said that visual artist Þór Vigfússon (b. 1954) swears allegiance to the minimalists. His work is characterized by simple shapes and pure color surfaces, and by the use of almost exclusively industrial materials such as plexiglass, MDF, stained glass and aluminum. Fluctuating between paintings and wall-mounted sculptures, Þór’s works speak into the space through their particular surfaces and textures, and through their joyful color combinations, which are nevertheless refined and down-to-earth. These works are determined and unequivocal, their simplicity being a sign of discipline and precision. At the same time, they retain a playfulness and interior mobility that results from the artist’s intuition and witty anticipation of the interplay of forms, materials and colors within the works and between the works and the space. It is precisely here that the conversation between work, space and the viewer begins.
Þór’s works have a strangely mesmerizing effect – their colored two-dimensional surfaces appear to float in the air, while their laminated, stained glass surfaces reflect both the viewer and the space, drawing them deeply into a sea of color, into another world. The interaction that occurs between the shapes and colors in Þór’s work is affected by every nuance of light and shade. In the Skaftfell gallery, over the coming weeks the rising sun will influence this interaction, creating a changing response as the natural light in the fjord intensifies.
The starting point of Þór’s works is form and color, the basic foundations of art. They are not intended to give us concrete meaning, but they first and foremost create an experience of form and space. That experience can create an inner conversation in which the works become a kind of milestone, guiding and connecting our experience both outwards and inwards. The simplicity and interplay of material, color, form and space is conducive to creating inner peacefulness and quietness in times of crisis and challenge, such as our community in Seyðisfjörður has recently been undergoing. May this exhibition bring us gently into the light that is ahead, and into the spring.
Þór Vigfússon was born in Reykjavík in 1954 and studied art at MHÍ and later in the Netherlands at the Strichting De Vrije Academie in The Hague. He has exhibited in many places both in Iceland and abroad, e.g. Kjarvalsstaðir, the Living Art Museum, i8 gallery, Quint Gallery in San Diego and The Chinese European Art Center, Xiamen City, China. Þór lives and works in Reykjavík and Djúpivogur.
Curators: Hanna Christel Sigurkarlsdóttir and Julia Martin
Photo: Vigfús Birgisson, i8 gallerí
