Artist talk: Egill Sæbjörnsson and the Icelandic Love Corporation - Eirún Sigurðardóttir and Jóní Jónsdóttir

Artists talk with Egill Sæbjörnsson and current members of the Icelandic Love Corporation, Eirún Sigurðardóttir and Jóní Jónsdóttir, who have works in the exhibition Eternal Recurrence. In Icelandic.

Registration is required HERE.

Because of Good Thursday there is no entrance fee!

In this extensive exhibition, the works of Jóhannes S. Kjarval (1885-1972) create a thread which connects different periods in time. His art is displayed along with the works of artists who have been prominent on the Icelandic art scene in recent years. Kjarval’s most common and beloved subject was Icelandic nature and landscape, but he also painted many portraits and fantasy images where creatures and figures emerge, and various nature phenomena are personified. The artworks on display here are created in diverse media, expressing different approaches to these subjects. 

Egill Sæbjörnsson is interested in the connection between the mental reality and the physical reality; in the connection between what we think and what is happening in the world around us. In how we project our thoughts onto the world, just like we record the world through our senses. Egill uses humor, music, and magic, which highlights a freedom in the interpretation of his work to viewers. For Egill, all artworks have always been alive and have co-created us as much as we created them. Using a playful approach, he celebrates this mischievous creative force; the relationship between humans and the environment. The experimental interrelation between the components of his works cannot simply be described as “installations”. They are at once performance, sculptural accumulations, and three-dimensional drawings. 

A feminist approach, along with playfulness and sincere genuineness characterise the work of the collective, which is realised in the medium that reflects their idea at any given time. The Icelandic Love Corporation use their Grandmothers engineering, craftsmanship, and resourcefulness mixed with elegance and modern technology in their work. The Icelandic Love Corporation was founded in 1996 by Sigrún Hrólfsdóttir, Jóní Jónsdóttir and Eirún Sigurðardóttir. Dóra Ísleifsdóttir joined the group soon after and was a member of the collective until 2001, and Sigrún until 2016. Jóní Jónsdóttir and Eirún Sigurðardóttir now make up The Icelandic Love Corporation, one of the longest-running art collectives in Iceland.