Havoc of the mind, havoc of daily life, the havoc of human history—havoc has prevailed as a theme throughout the four-decade-long career considered here.

In the exhibition Havoc we focus on the art of Hallgrímur Helgason, an artist equally known for his writing and social commentary. Within the visual realm, Helgason has chosen painting and drawing as his means of expression.

Hallgrímur uses these media to tell stories that resonate personally insofar as they reflect the spirit of the times or, more recently, respond to global events. A guiding principle has been his search for painting’s expressive potential, a motive that reflects a number of artistic movements. As a rule, the individual style Helgason has developed over the course of his practice has always been figurative, but his approach has drifted between realism and fantasy.

Havoc is the eighth exhibition in the Reykjavík Art Museum’s autumn exhibition series at Kjarvalsstaðir. These mid-career retrospectives survey work by artists who have already made valuable contributions to the history of Icelandic art—and who presumably have much more to offer. Our aim is to explore a wide range of subjects, conceptual approaches, and media, and on this occasion, we encounter painting as a platform for storytelling and social critique. As always, it is our intention at the Reykjavík Art Museum that these exhibitions and catalogues will help sustain the ongoing attention that Icelandic artists deserve.

Hallgrimur Helgason is an Icelandic writer and artist born in Reykjavik in 1959. He spent a year at the Art School of Iceland and another one at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich, Germany. Since 1983 he has been working as an independent artist and writer. Helgason started out as a painter, and has held over 30 solo shows and participated in over 30 group exhibitions home and abroad. As a struggling artist he lived in Boston 1985-86, in New York 1986-89 and in Paris 1990-1995. Helgason published his first novel in 1990 and got his international breakthrough as a writer with the publication of 101 Reykjavik in 1996. In 2001 he was awarded the Icelandic Prize of Literature for his novel The Author of Iceland.