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reviews Hreinn fridfinnsson
Hreinn
the exhibition with fishing flies displayed on high glass shelves, and these
exert an unsettling attraction on the visitors, putting them for a second in
FridFinnsson
the position of fish ready to bite the hook.
But beyond formal comparisons and the hunt for influences,
serpentine Gallery, london Friðfinnsson is a storyteller, enhancing the subtly narrative quality of his
17 July – 2 septem ber works by the simplicity of his means. In 1974 he read about an eccentric
gentleman who had planned to build a house inside out. Friðfinnsson
decided to finish the project. In a desolate landscape he constructed a replica
Initiated by Olafur Eliasson and Kjetil Thorsen, co-designers of the 2007 (House Project, 1974), though he kept its location secret, the wallpaper and
Serpentine Pavilion, this is Icelandic artist Hreinn Friðfinnsson’s first framed pictures left to be discovered and appreciated by passing walkers.
retrospective in the UK. Friðfinnsson’s practice centres on evocations of Gradually the news of this extraordinary house lost in the mountain spread.
nature, a conceptual repertoire that seems to be shared by many northern To Friðfinnsson, neither the work itself nor its association with his name was
contemporary artists. The rough Ernstian frottage drawings From Mont important: it was the rumour that mattered. The inside-out house soon
Sainte-Victoire (1998) bring to mind the wind-beaten sides of northern became part of the Icelandic pantheon of oddities – alongside the rock
hills (notwithstanding their Provençal title); in Summer Night (1990), that can’t be moved without stopping the chicken laying eggs, and the river
five coloured-paper cones inscribe on the wall the blazing chromatic where three grey cows can’t drink at the same time without provoking a
atmosphere of dusk at the pole. Despite the wilderness they evoke, these rock fall – as described by the artist in Sacred and Enchanted Places (1972).
delicate works need the pristine, tame space of a white cube to flourish. There is a mystic dimension to Friðfinnsson’s work, a celebration of
But Friðfinnsson is not a man to be put off by paradoxes. In Untitled nature that summons up the ancient bard’s tradition. This almost juvenile
(2006) – as in many other text works – he happily merges the strict visual enthusiasm for inexplicable beauty – best illustrated in the photograph
language of 1960s conceptual art with Romanticism à la Caspar David of the artist receiving in his open hands the colours of a prism’s rainbow
Friedrich. Coupling the story of a meteorite’s fall with a sample of the – sometimes approaches the naive. But Friðfinnsson seems unaware of
asteroid under a glass box, Untitled seems to be the Icelandic version of the cuteness lurking in some of his works. And except for Drops (2000–7),
Joseph Kosuth’s One and Three Chairs (1965), though focusing on local which fails to be anything but pretty, this lack of self-consciousness is what
legend rather than on Saussure’s semiotic theories. Friðfinnsson’s use of makes his work so attractive. A genuine invitation to wonderment.
ready-made objects (another canonical element of conceptual art) is also Coline Milliard
reminiscent of Duchamp’s facetiousness: the Icelandic artist punctuates
Pair, 2004–5, mirror with silver wooden frame and shoe, 48 x 57 cm (mirror), overall dimensions variable. © 2007 the artist. Courtesy Galerie nordenhake, berlin
153 Artreview
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