Gunter Damisch: Worlds and Ways

The exhibition showcases the career of Austrian artist Gunter Damisch (b. 1958) from the 1980s to the present day. Damisch became well-known in the 1980s as one of the Neue Wilde or New Wild Ones, an informal group of young artists who responded to what was seen as the international decline of painting with powerful, colourful images. Damisch uses many different methods in his art, but all the works in this show are graphic in nature, from traditional prints to woodcuts, monoprints and printed collages. The pieces provide insight into Damisch‘s personal iconography, expressed in both abstract and figurative imagery.

The works convey the artist‘s attitude to art itself, the freedom entailed by expression in drawing, and the joy of the creative process.

Since 1992 Gunter Damisch has held a professorship at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. He has shown his work widely in recent decades: in 2013, for instance, the Albertina Museum in Vienna held a major exhibition of his work.

Worlds and Ways includes works donated to the Reykjavík Art Museum by the artist.