Weather Writing - Guðrún Kristjánsdóttir

Guðrún Kristjánsdóttir is known for her impressive works that interpret Icelandic nature in a very pioneering way. This exhibition displays her photos, video installations and paintings. The exhibition curator is Birta Guðjónsdóttir.


Icelandic artist Guðrún Kristjánsdóttir is, in her work, making an approach to movement and light in Icelandic landscape. She has been doing a research on patterns of weathering, of snow, made of quick shifts of weather and patterns in old wood-, and word-carving, using mediums that she finds most apt to captivate at each given time of the natural transformational process: painting in layers, editing videos, using photos, doing installation-works, prints and wall-sculptures. Guðrún is reading the stream-writing of the weather, telling stories of what she sees, sometimes it's senseless and playfully absurd and poetical, sometimes political, but always visually challenging.

Guðrún Kristjánsdóttir has done more than twenty-five private exhibitions, most recently in New York and Reykjavik. This current exhibition project that is being prepared to travel around Europe, is both an installation and a publication event, as part of the exhibition is a semi monographic documentation of her career, and semi autobiographical book-work through correspondance with art critics, philosophers and writers that have been close to her work process.

The exhibition in 2009 is an invitation to Guðrún Kristjánsdóttir's way of looking at a land of transformation; an invitation into her laboratory, where she has been doing a continual research on the contradiction between the still and the movement, the distant and the near in the process of constant changing brightness and weathering. The exhibition will make a space of various attempts of looking at the land from within it's movement, contrasts, where the boundaries of different visual mediums are touched and questioned in her own personal way.

(Parallel to those exhibitions and publication events, Guðrún is a participant in another publication event in early 2009, being author of one book-work of five in a boxed-set, also including book-works by Margrét H. Blöndal, Roni Horn, Hulda Stefánsdóttir, Thordis Adalsteinsdottir and Hrafnhildur Arnardottir a.k.a. Shoplifter, published by Dandruff Space, New York/Reykjavik.)

Text by Oddný Eir Ævarsdóttir

CURRICULUM VITAE
Gudrun Kristjansdottir
Visual Artist
Reykjavik, Iceland
ww.gudrun.is
gudrun@gudrun.is

EDUCAT ION
1977-1979 Ecole des Beaux Arts,
Aix-en-Provence, France
1974-1979 The Reykjavik School of Art

SELECTED PRIVATE EXHIBITIONS
2008 Gallery Agust, Reykjavik, Iceland
2007 ASI Art Museum, Reykjavik, Iceland, Weathering
2007 Hafnarborg Institute of Art,
Hafnarfjördur, Iceland. The Soft Lavas
2005 Skalholt Cathedral, Iceland, Installation
2005 Gallery Luise Ross, New York, USA. Thaw
2005 Dandruff Space, Williamsburg, New York, USA
Earth´s Dandruff
2004 The Nordic Houses, Berlin, Germany
Video installation
2000 Hafnarborg Institute of Art, Hafnarfjordur, Iceland
1999 Gallery Iceland, Oslo, Norway
1998 Louise Ross Gallery, NY, USA
1998 Nordic Heritage Museum, Seattle, USA
1996 Gerduberg Municipal Art Institute, Visual
conference and retrospective and new works
1995 Kopavogur Art Museum, Kopavogur Iceland
1993 Galery De L’Awei, Drachten, Netherlands
1992 The Nordic House, Reykjavik, Iceland
1991 Gallery Orpheus, Eskilstuna, Sweden
1990 Gallery Persons & Lindell, Helskinki, Finland

SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2008 Reykjavik Academy, Iceland Art and scolars,
2007 National Gallery of Iceland, Reykjavik, Iceland
Ways in between
2007 LA Art Museum, Hveragerdi, Iceland, Moving Mountains
2005 Gallery 100°, Reykjavik, Iceland, Streams
2005 Stockholms Auktionsverk, Stockholm, Sweden
2003 Den Nordatlantiske Brygge, Copenhagen, Denmark
2002 Santiago de Compostella, Spain, Moment ii
2002 ASI Museum, Reykjavik Iceland, Moment i
2002 Nortdic Contemporary Art, Hadelands Glassverk,
Norway
2001 Nortdic Contemporary Art, Steninge Palace, Sweden
2001 Hallormstadur Forest, East Iceland, Art in the Woods
2000 Gerduberg Municipal Art Gallery, Iceland, Elements
2000 Pittura de DOZZA, Bologna, Italy
2000 New Bedford Art Museum, Massachusetts, USA
Black & White
1999 The Round Tower, Copenhagen, Denmark
1998 Museum of Contemporary Art, Seatle, USA
1995 Vejle Kunstmuesum, Vejle, Denmark
1993 Deutsche Bank, Frankfurt, Germany
1993 Gallery Frank Bustamante, New York, USA

WORKS IN PUBLIC COLLECTIONS
Reykjavik Municipal Art Museum
The National Art Gallery of Iceland
Gerdarsafn, Museum of Kopavogur, Iceland
Hafnarborg, The Hafnarfjördur Institute of Culture and Fine Art,
Iceland
The University of Iceland
The Icelandic University of Education
The National Broadcasting Service of Iceland
The National Bank of Iceland
The district Court of Reykjavik
The Bank of Iceland
Icelandair
KB Bank
The State Finance Agency
Also works in private collections in Iceland, Sweden, Norway,
Switzerland, USA, Canada and Germany.

RELATED ART ACTIVITIES
2008 Chair person of Hallgrimschurch Art Exhibitions
2007 Commissioned work for a new Hall at
the Blue Lagoon, Iceland
2007 Conference on collaboration between visual artists
and Heritage Museums in Iceland
2005 Lecture at the Art Academy of Iceland
2000 Selected to participate in Art Competition for
the Icelandic University of Education
1998 Teaching at Pratt Fine Art Center /
Nordic Heritage Museum´s
Summer Intensive Programme, Seattle, USA
1998 Lecture at the Nordic Heritage Museum
of Seattle WA, USA
1993 Lecture at De L´Awei,Drachten, Holland
1990 Lecture at the Helsinki Academy of Fine Art

GRANTS AND STIPENDS
2005 Recipient of The Pollock-Krasner Foundation grant.
Gudrun Kristjansdottir has received grants and stipends from
the City of Reykjavik (1998), the Icelandic State Fund for Artists
(1987, 1991, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002), from the Nordic Art
Centre in Sveaborg, Finland, from Cité International des Arts in
Paris, and from the American-Scandinavian Foundation.
She is a member of the federation of Icelandic artists and
its chairman from 1994 - 1996. From 1992 -1994 she was
a member of the board and was chairman of the exhibition
committee 1989 -1992.