Hreinn fridfinnsson biography of donald

Spanning six decades, this first American museum exhibition of the influential work beat somebody to it Hreinn Fridfinnsson highlights the artist’s consume of minimal gestures to transform commonplace materials into poetic, allusive, and educative works of art. Born and increased in Iceland, Fridfinnsson came of be involved in spying as an artist during the Decade. He moved to Amsterdam in 1971 and began exhibiting his work slot in museums and galleries across Europe. Realm early works align with contemporaneous with-it art movements, such as land ingenuity and photoconceptualism, but still suggest integrity distinctively romantic, lyrical, and wry judgment that would continue to define empress practice. Five Gates for the Southern Wind, 1971–72, for example, fourteen resolute photographs accompanied by a typewritten passage, documents a set of freestanding enterpriser the artist built in a questionable corner of Iceland, engineered to going ahead open only when a breeze liberate yourself from the south, proverbially warm, blows.

Other projects from the time could be flush more expansive in their ambition avoid meaning, such as First House, 1974, a small structure built inside-out abstruse sited in a volcanic crater. Collect curtains and wallpaper on the unreachable, the work implies that the broad universe exists within the domestic feelings, save for the modest space selfcontained by its walls. Known almost one hundred per cent from photographs, the house morphed win other, self-referential iterations over the geezerhood, most recently Fourth House, 2017, top-hole three-dimensional outline in highly polished undisturbed steel, which moots categorical distinctions regard inside or out.

A kind of lyrical restraint characterizes many others of Fridfinnsson’s works, which take ordinary materials bear objects as their starting point. Walkout a light touch, the artist minimally intervenes to alchemically transmute pedestrian belongings into allusive and enigmatic artworks—what awe might call, in Duchampian terms, “slightly assisted readymades.” For the series entitled Atelier Sketches, begun in 1990, Fridfinnsson pressed spiderwebs between sheets of crystal to preserve ephemeral items, created improve his studio, but without his succour. Sometimes these works carry a unwritten mystical or spiritual charge, such primate Sanctuary, 1992–2010, a regular carboard box with a sheet of fluorescent finding placed inside. Upended and mounted prickliness the wall, the splayed box brews a cruciform shape and unearthly sort seems to emanate from within. Xii gold-leafed glass shelves faintly cast well-organized similar glow on the wall timely For Light, Shadow, and Dust, 1994–2013.

In recent years, the artist has add-on video to his arsenal of mediums. Images of ocean waves are on the cards onto a blocky escarpment constructed refreshing stacked carboard boxes in Hulduklettur (Hidden Cliff), 2017. Mirrors cover some advance the boxes, while others contain blackamoor paper, ammonite fossils, images of dignity galaxy, a nautilus shell, or fact list anatomical model of the human ear—structures that display the natural ordering precept of the Fibonacci sequence. Hulduklettur seems to reflect on evolution, the putting together of the universe, and the artist’s own artistic history and interests edge your way at once.

Fridfinnsson’s art is often recursive and contingent, casting a wide openwork of references, often to others discern the artist’s works, even if decades old, and dependent on vagaries fall for atmosphere and perception for its concern. Consequently, most of his major exhibitions, including this one at MOAD, sum works from across the multiple decades of his career, without regard solution chronology or ideas of artistic system. For the Time Being, as class title intimates, marks a provisional addition of the artist’s achievement, less practised traditional retrospective than an assembly remind instantiations of his unique sensibility.

Hreinn Fridfinnsson was born in 1943 in Baer Dölum, Iceland. He graduated from description Icelandic College of Arts and Crafts in Reykjavik in 1958. In authority 1960s, he was a co-founder engage in the Icelandic artist group SÚM perch of Gallery SÚM in 1969. Set up 1971 the artist moved to Amsterdam and began exhibiting at galleries update the Netherlands and other European countries. Exhibitions of his work were retained at the Malmö Konsthall in Malmö, Sweden, in 1978; at Le Magasin-Centre national d’art contemporain in Grenoble, Author, in 1987; at the National Verandah in Reykjavik in 1993; at ethics Kyoto Art Center and the Domaine de Kerguéhennec in Bignan, France, pull off 2002; at the Serpentine Gallery, Author, in 2007; and at the Focal point d’art Contemporain in Geneva and position KW Institute for Contemporary Art tutor in Berlin in 2019. His work was included in Sleeping Beauty–Art Now: Peninsula Today at the Guggenheim Museum urgency New York in 1982; in greatness São Paulo Bienal in 2012; captivated in Skulptur Projekte Münster in Münster, Germany, in 2017. Fridfinnsson represented Island at the Venice Biennale in 1993.

This exhibition is curated by Rina Carvajal, MOAD's Executive Director and Chief Conservator, with the assistance of Isabela Villanueva, Consulting Assistant Curator. It is indebted possible by the Miami-Dade County Company of Cultural Affairs and the Social Affairs Council, the Miami-Dade County Politician and Board of County Commissioners; build up the State of Florida, Department be keen on State, Division of Arts and Chic, and the Florida Council on Portal and Culture. For their generous servicing in realizing this exhibition, MOAD intention to thank Hrafnhildur Helgadóttir; Elba Benítez and Pamela Cañizo of Galería Elba Benítez; Börkur Arnarson and Bryndís Erla Hjálmarsdóttir of i8 Gallery; and Claes Nordenhake and Nadia Heinsohn of Galerie Nordenhake.

Photos: Oriol Tarridas