NEW AVANT-GARDE FROM ICELAND

Throughout the 1970s, Galerie S:t Petri in Lund maintained good and close relationships with various avant-garde artists in Iceland. After SUM, which played a significant role in the development of experimental art during the 1960s and 1970s both at home and abroad, contact continued with Gallery Sudurgata 7, and now a completely new generation of artists can be seen emerging — a new avant-garde is in the process of developing.

The six Icelanders presenting their ideas at Galerie S:t Petri from 14–28 March 1981 have all studied under Jan Van Eyck Academie in Maastricht, Holland, over the past few years. They belong to the first generation of artists educated at the new, experimentally oriented art academy in Reykjavík. Some of the former SUM members initiated this line of work, and for a year now, both older and younger generations of experimental artists have been collaborating within the newly founded Living Art Museum in Reykjavík.

"Inside-Out Art" is a completely new phenomenon in contemporary art. The term was coined by Galerie S:t Petri and refers to the six exhibitors’ attempts to visualize the innermost essence of human beings or objects. Thus, for instance, a tube or a ball’s interior has been formed into delicate plaster fragments that fill these objects’ inner space. What usually cannot be seen here takes on a tangible form.

What happens within a person’s thought world remains private as long as it is not communicated. Every action thus becomes an attempt to let the inner speak to the outer, so that the surroundings can understand that wholeness consists of both the inner and the outer. The exhibited works express a desire to move beyond dualistic thinking — that is, the separation between black and white, life and death, the inner and the outer.

A candle in a vase allows us to experience both the inner and the outer simultaneously. Everything is essentially one, although our perceptual capacity does not allow us to see both sides at the same time. Fantasy and intuition are essential to develop if we are to experience multidimensionality in existence.

This is the first time that "Inside-Out Art" is presented. The artists are: Sólveig Adalsteinsdóttir, Ingólfur Arnarsson, Magnús V. Gudlaugsson, Thór Elis Pálsson, Eggert Pétursson, and Guðrún Hrönn Ragnarsdóttir.

The exhibition is open weekdays 3–8 p.m., Saturdays 1–5 p.m.

NON-COMMERCIAL ART LABORATORY FOUNDED IN 1971.
USUALLY OPEN MONDAY TO FRIDAY 3–8 P.M., SATURDAY AND SUNDAY 1–5 P.M.