D5 Jóhannes Atli Hinriksson

Jóhannes Atli Hinriksson (b. 1975) has distinguished himself with dramatic and sometimes zany installations constructed from rough, low-cost materials with most rudimentary craft. There is nothing fixed or final about his work. He starts out with a concept or the beginnings of a narrative, but in the installation process the work develops and takes on it own form. He works fast and allows things to happen, leaving visible traces of his process and action - traces expressing the power of creation and sometimes the violence of destruction. There is a certain rhythm to his art, suggestive of the energy of hard rock. His installations are full of sundry allusions to African art and myths, Voodoo, sorcery, and folk art. To Hinriksson, the spider is a powerful artist whose web snares and entangles its pray. The web reminds us also of dream-catchers and the great web of Fate, the Warp of the Wyrd, and other myths that connect to the rhythmic structure of the drumming and its allusions to the progression of life.

Jóhannes Atli Hinriksson earned his B.A. degree from Iceland Academy of the Arts in 2000 and MFA degree from the School of Visual Arts in New York in 2005.