exhibitions

solstice-to-solstice
  • place: Akureyri, Iceland

25::July::1997 13:29 → permalink

A short note about the installation that I just opened yesterday as part of the Akureyri ListaSumar 1997 (Summer Arts Festival). It is an extension of the performance series solstice-to-solstice: a naming of the Light of Being [it takes a few minutes for the java slide-show to upload] and the intro on the wall looks something like this:

This installation is a visual exploration of a life-path — a braided passage that is both material and spiritual. As Light forms, informs, and sustains Life, its influence on the large and small is whole and complete. The eye absorbs this energy and that inspiration becomes material essence for Being. These images are a meditation, a reviving of memory, a remembering, a potential source for the imagination and, most of all, a visual naming in the fundamental sense. Naming is a basic creative process that brings the material world into being, it forms a matrix, an armature, upon which this personal visual history and memory is built. These images span a Cartesian time from June 21 1995 to June 21 1996, they span a wide Cartesian space. Outside of the Cartesian, they span steps of eye and heart that leave the Cartesian behind, and are suspended in a new construct of community, network, and being.

Probably a measure of bullshit, but the 40-meter long strip of images that span the space impressed the hell out of my back, leaving me crippled and craving more of the pain-killers that the Doc prescribed. One step forward, two steps back. A photographer from the national paper came in to do a portrait for upcoming coverage of the town’s summer art festival, and during the opening, the most retro and pin-headed critic (no, I can’t honestly call him a critic — should simply say guy-who-fills-columns-with-pointless-drivel) employed by the newspaper ran through the installation. The poor old fellow knows little about art, and nothing about photography. I recall the review he wrote for an exhibition I did some years back which was of as much critical value as an equal quantity of paper pulp destined to clean a baby’s arse. Some people don’t know when to quit. The only positive point is that a bad review from him pretty much confirms that an exhibition is at least interesting.

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TOTEM: ný verk
  • place: Reykjavík, Iceland

09::March::1991 22:13 → permalink

Curiosity of the Object: observation creation annihilation: With a Number of Choices, from the Totem exhibition, Reykjavík, Iceland, March 1991

This essay was written for an exhibition that included photographs, installations, and performances which took place at Galerí Einn Einn, Reykjavík, Iceland, March 1991.

The word totem evolves from the Ojibwa Indian (from the north-central west coast of North America) ototeman meaning a personal, family, or clan symbol, and is typically a plant or animal. The particular totemic object embodies a force or power that moves in both the physical and spiritual worlds; it is also a spiritual essence relating to the ancestral tradition of the group or individual. The Totem could be said to be an equivalent of the Greek Orthodox ikon.

The systems of spiritual belief and ritual behind the Ikon and the Totem stress that it is not the Object that is to be worshiped, but what the Object symbolizes. The object acts as a temporal focus for worship. That is, the act of worship and meditation is stimulated and deepened through the symbolic mediation of the iconic totem.

The objects introduced in this public exhibition have their roots in both of these culturally diverse traditions in form and purpose, although essence is communicated through the distinctive syntax of the photographic medium. The description of the work as “teikn í ljósmynd” (lit. marks-of-Light images) illustrates the importance of the iconic sign, symbol, or mark in the process of of ritual communication. The modern photograph is a powerful tool for the creation of iconic imagery — (i.e., advertising imagery: propaganda, indoctrination, information). While the still photograph is no longer at the apex of imaging technology, having been largely replaced by the video and computer image, it is probably the most common medium of visual communication and language. The photographic medium can be compared to linguistic forms of communication in many ways. For instance, a single image might be compared to a single word; when many images are brought together, full and complex expression becomes possible. Multiple juxtaposition of images could be called visual poetry.

The objects on exhibit explore visual expression of spiritual beliefs. In function, however, the objects exist in the void of the spiritually fragmented Modern Technological World where their appropriate role as Totem/Ikon is profaned and must be essentially re-established. Culturally a degradation of the sacred image has occurred — from Totem and Ikon to Modern Advertising image — from the promotion of spiritual welfare to promotion of material comfort. The objects presented in this exhibition attempt to reclaim the spiritual power of the image especially through concentrated meditations on Light. Photography, after all, is a process, like so many, perhaps all, that exists in complete dependence on Light. Fundamentally therefore, the use of the photographic medium here is to stimulate free insight into Light and Life (for is not Life somehow bound completely to Light?).

– jh, reykjavík, 3.3.91

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