CHART, the leading Nordic event for contemporary art, will take place at Kunsthal Charlottenborg from 26 -29 August 2021. After last year’s de-centred approach, CHART 2021 returns to its historic home in the heart of Copenhagen, bringing together the best contemporary art galleries from the Nordics and creating a single-entry point into the region’s gallery scene. In addition to a physical event, CHART will launch a series of new editorial and onlineinitiatives, connecting the arts community beyond both geographical bordersand the annual summer event.
For its 9th edition, CHART art fair will showcase 27 leading Nordic galleries working with both regional and international artists. CHART will also introduce Experimental, a new section featuring 11 artist-run and alternative exhibition spaces as well as newly established galleries from the region.
This year four Icelandic galleries will be participating: BERG Contemporary, Hverfisgallerí, i8 gallery, and Þula.
Hulda Stefánsdóttir, Shift. Courtesy of BERG Contemporary.
For CHART 2021 BERG Contemporary presents a new exhibition by Hulda Stefánsdóttir and introduces multimedia artist Dodda Maggý.
Hulda Stefánsdóttir‘s paintings appear deceptively simple, allowing the texture of the background to become a prominent feature, but through this delicate overlaying she explores the subject of time and the impossibility of presenting any given moment without echoes or traces of its past.
Dodda Maggý’s audio-visual works explore the complex artistic language of time based media. Producing audio-visual installations, films, music, sound art or silent moving images, she attempts to externalize the internal dimensions of dreams, memories and imagination.
For CHART 2021, i8 Gallery presents twelve new watercolours by Ólafur Elíasson.
Watercolours have been a sustained interest of Elíasson’s that he has used since 2009 to investigate colour, movement, and time. The works often conjure subtle illusions of space and light through the repeated application of thin, transparent washes onto a single sheet of paper in a meticulous, highly physical production process.
Hildur Bjarnadóttir, Different communities develop. Courtesy of Hverfisgallerí.
At CHART 2021, Hverfisgallerí will present works by four of the gallery’s artists: Hildur Bjarnadóttir, Loji Höskuldsson, Hrafnkell Sigurðsson, and Kristinn E. Hrafnsson.Through their respective practices and mediums, these artists all share a conceptual framework concerned with heritage and the history of Icelandic cultural identity.
Through the use of wool and thread dyed with colours extracted from local flora, Hildur Bjarnadóttir investigates issues of belonging, ecology, place and cohabitation with animals and plants on a small piece of land in the south of Iceland where she lives and works. The plants on the piece of land function as recording devices which take in information from the ecological and social systems they belong to through the soil and the air.
Loji Höskuldsson explores new and traditional ways of embroidery, where he often depicts a still life composed of everyday objects, plants and fruits, featuring local products which are instantly recognizable and nostalgic.
Hrafnkell Sigurðsson’s art deals with the shock of contrasts, between nature and culture. His aesthetic vision deals with the ultimate questions of survival where devastation is often wrapped in irresistible beauty.
Kristinn E. Hrafnsson deals with people’s understanding of their surroundings and how nature influences his outlook and relationships. The relationship between the artwork and its environment has always been an important aspect of his work.
Kristín Morthens, Gegnumtrekkur. Courtesy of Þula.
In just over a year since opening, Þula has already established itself as a well known name in the Icelandic Art scene. For their first year at CHART, they will be presenting an exhibition of paintings by Kristín Morthens. Through abstract figures and landscapes, the paintings create narratives of intimacy, separation and boundaries interpreted in terms of physical form within a dreamlike space, in settings that do not seem to belong to this world.
