Nature is not only encompassing it also resides in us preventing us from distinguishing clearly between outer reality and inner perception. This is why Hrafnkell Sigurðsson is preoccupied with nature as the one who realizes that he belongs to it completely. He pitches his cusped, prominent tents – foreign elements in style of symmetric space laboratories or oriental pagodas – in front of the snow-white surroundings. His whimsicality towards nature is characterized by a provocative boldness whereas the surroundings cannot assume his orderliness and must consent to a position of a neutral background to his staging. Our inner nature is however amply revealed in Buchers´ Duel, a video of two symmetric butchers, holding on to hooks in mid-air as fighting Samurais dressed in pastel coloured freezing plant outfit against a black background, ready to attack one another with long daggers, which however never touch.

Another challenge appeared in 2024 in form of Aerials, as continuation of Freeze Frame, a video loop installation on five LED screens exhibited in Ásmundarsalur, Reykjavik, in 2020. Both series are the result of innumerable climbing to the summit of Mount Skálafell, dating back to 2014, where the snow laid aerials and the sculptor’s supporting iron rods covered in clay seems obvious. The difference is that Hrafnkell is not involved with the modeling but satisfies himself with documenting the attacking snowdrift, the result of nature’s elements thus approaching creation itself yet avoiding any appropriation of its product.

Hrafnkell Sigurðsson (b. 1963) lives and works in Reykjavik. He graduated as Master of Fine Arts from the Goldsmiths College in London, in 2002, after studies at the Jan van Eyck Academy in Maastricht, 1988-1990, and the Icelandic College of Arts and Crafts, 1987. According to himself, he provides the structure on which nature relies, photographs it and processes in a computer, partly assisted by artificial intelligence. The human hand, nature’s elements and digital technology are combined in a complete process where the final result appears in the form of photographic works.

In 2023 Hrafnkell Sigurðsson received the prestigious Icelandic Visual Art Award.