Force and Tenderness - Sigrun Olafsdottir

A retrospective exhibition of Sigrún Ólafsdóttir’s sculptures and drawings in 1996-2008.
The artist Sigrún Ólafsdóttir, was born in Reykjavík in 1963 and now lives in Saarbrücken in Germany. Her creativeness in particular has been focused on sculpture and drawing. She has been commissioned to make large sculptures for companies such as banks and other private institutes in Germany.

Her works are very versatile both in meaning and manipulation. Her focus is the three dimensional art work which always shows the space and the surrounding area so that it is redefined. Aesthetical expression spans a very wide field one can mention small and detailed sculptures and installations which sometimes fill a big space. In her installations the line between the work itself and the space around it are obliterated very impressively.

Sigrún Ólafsdóttir takes advantage of the iconography of contructivism in a very convincing way. Even though her sculptures take on big spaces/rooms they are never complicated, overloaded nor pretentious. Effortlessness is an inseperable part of her art, even her large sculptures have almost delicate, polished surface and the three dimensional line is the main drive of the work. By doing so the artist moves from the linear feeling up to the surface, from the ground and the wall up to the sky.

The material she uses are clear and simple: wood, steel, aluminium, plaster and led. One raw material is usually more conspicuous than other and gives it an obvious visual subject matter and persuasiveness.

Sigrún Ólafsdóttir has breathed a new air into contemporary sculpture with simple methods she creates imagnative art works with various aesthetical aspects which are completely distinctive.

Recently she has done a series of drawings which could be looked at as ‘classical studies’ rather than independant sketches for sculptures. In these drawings the line plays the most important role and creates idealogical correspondence against the sculptures.

The drawings of Sigrún’s these last few years are unusually large (100 x 200 cm or 180 x 180 cm) and have special meaning in this relation because with them the idea itself about the medium is doubt as well as expanding it. The technique is fairly new, she works with tusch and plaster mix on canvas so it reminds one of a painting. By doing this she manages convincingly to convey her three dimensional thoughts to two dimensional image.

Text by:
Dr. Richard W. Gassen

Director of the Wilhelm Hack Museum
Ludwigshafen/Rhine, Germany