Bjarki Bragason

48.191088 / 16.375072 = 4 

Opens today, December 7th 2016 at 7pm. 

Artist talk on December 10th at 5pm.

48.191088 / 16.375072 = 4 is the title of an exhibition of works by artists Bjarki Bragason, Marte Kiessling, Thomas Hörl and the Vienna based artist collective Perlimpinpin.

Kiessling, Hörl and Bragason collaborated with Hildigunnur Birgisdóttir on a publication project in 2013, titled  MUS.RER.NAT.BOX5320·REYKJAVIK 119101  The project revolved around site research at a volcanic crater in the suburbs of Reykjavik. In the crater, the artists found a skeleton of a small Corvus Corax raven, along with an identity band belonging to the bird, holding a record of its place and date of birth, giving a clue to the movement and territory of birds within the crater. The publication investigated the meticulous recording of minor events, with the record of the particular raven’s life as a central subject. Continuing their collaboration, Kiessling, Hörl and Bragason entered a conversation with the Perlimpinpin collective on the subject of ways in which time is recorded. The artists approach the issue of time from a multitude of approaches, including research on climate change response, the recording and reworking on folklore and mythologies, and a documentaries of family histories.

Bjarki Bragason has for the past years worked on the subject of collisions in time and politics, investigating the sites where ideologies meet, and where the human- and geological time scales intercept. His work, Ten Thousand and One Years, presented in this exhibition derives from his research on scientific experiments taking place in Iceland, where carbon dioxide emissions are pumped deep into bedrock, crystallizing emissions, creating a stone fossil out of industrial waste. Thomas Hörl’s new piece Namedropping especially created for the exhibition, shows his long term research of Austrian and international constructed characters for folkloric plays in the Christmas and carnival seasons. On display you can read the names mounted in a collage work in a kind of passage, which divides the two main rooms of the exhibition space. In this gateway, drawn and painted curtains hang from above and create a stage for the Puadlmuata, the beautiful Perchten, Lutzlweibl, Thomaswaschl, etc. as well as for the viewer.In her recent work, Marte Kiessling researches her own family history along with archival pieces, aiming to find the connections between the past and the present and the direct results of her ancestor’s decisions in relation to her own life. In her two video works on view in the exhibition, Decisions (2014) and Across China (2016) she explains brief excerpts of her Great-Grandmother’s life. The works feature a dilemma. On one hand she depicts her as the woman she was – an early feminist with a clear vision of her own life, – on the other hand as the privileged and wealthy person she also was, with colonialist convictions and beliefs. Perlimpinpin, a Viennese artist collective contribute to the exhibition, as hosts of the project, with a collaborative piece.

The exhibition is generously supported by the Icelandic Art Center.

Bjarki Bragason (b. Reykjavik 1983) studied at the Iceland Academy of the Arts, UdK Berlin, and received an MFA from CalArts, Los Angeles. Recent solo exhibitions include Past Understandings and Desire Ruin at Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches Museum and Naturhistorisches Museum. Bjarki is the recipient of the Dungal Art Award, the Guðmunda Andrésdóttir Scholarship and the Lovelace Scholarship. He has been artist in residence at Kultur Kontakt Austria, HIAP Helsinki, Honolulu Hawaii, and at the Pro Artibus Foundation and Schildt Foundation. Recent group exhibitions include Infinite Next at the Living Art Museum, Reykjavik, Distance Plan at Human Resources in Los Angeles, Kingdom: Flora, Fauna and Fable at the Reykjavik Art Museum and Imagine the Present at St. Paul St. Gallery, Auckland, New Zealand. Bjarki is Assistant Professor and Program Director at the Iceland Academy of the Arts.