Exhibition Opening - Anna Guðjónsdóttir: Pars Pro Toto

On Thursday, 21 February at 17:00, Anna Guðjónsdóttir’s exhibition, Pars Pro Toto, will open in Hafnarhúsið, A-Hall.

Anna Guðjónsdóttir was born and raised in Reykjavík but currently lives in Hamburg, Germany, where she’s had a successful career and held large exhibitions, for which she’s won awards.

In the A-Hall, Anna exhibits a new piece in many parts which stretches across the whole space. Anna’s art springs from the traditional painting, where she grapples with classic questions of the boundaries of two-dimensional, painted surface and three-dimensional, actual space – the boundaries between the original and the copy. Anna elicits her ideas by referencing landscape and architecture, as well as using the form of the exhibition cabinets. In the exhibition Pars Pro Toto, the exhibition hall is converted into a cabinet of sorts, for the guests to enter, surrounded by paintings that reflect the space itself and also open a door into another, unforeseen worlds, like the mirror in Alice in Wonderland, which gave her an opportunity to see the world beyond and get back into the viewer’s real world. This is vital for the life of the artwork, without viewer’s participation, artwork is only a collection of material.

Apart from gloss paintings and large iron frames, which form the aforementioned exhibition cabinets, Anna exhibits paintings which she has painted directly onto a wall in the hall.

Anna studied at the sculpture department of the Icelandic College of Art and Crafts, and then went to Germany, where she studied at the Hamburg Art Academy and graduated in 1992.

Anna will offer guidance of her exhibition on Sunday, 23 February at 15:00, and also give an open lecture in the Iceland University of the Arts on Friday, 8 March, at 13:00.

Curator is Markús Þór Andrésson.
 

In the past few years, artists have been invited to take on the A-Hall in Hafnarhúsið with new installations. The hall’s architecture is characterised by grand pillars of the old warehouse, and large windows which fill the old loading door. The exhibitions have included Ingólfur Arnarson’s Ground Level (2018), Ilmur Stefánsdóttir’s Panic (2017) and Monika Grzymala’s Envoi (2016), all of which echoed their surroundings. After Anna Guðjónsdóttir, Finnbogi Pétursson will bring a new installation to the same hall.