Ívar Valgarðsson – Spill

Hafnarhús

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Spill by Ívar Valgarðsson (b. 1954) comprises three murals of drips of paint which have trickled onto the floor in Gallery A at the Reykjavík Art Museum’s Hafnarhús site, plus three photographs. Ívar focuses a digital microscope camera, designed for scientific research, on the paint-drips, and projects the images onto the walls in real time – as a kind of magnified digital paintings of the drips.

In this way he draws attention to the paint that has been spilt. He makes use of the painter’s mistakes, when painting the walls of the space, by returning the drips to the wall.

Spill is, like Ívar’s previous works, well-considered and lyrical. The artist is enchanted by the creativity embodied in the formation and development of the manmade environment – high-tension cables transporting electricity from one region to another, splashes of oil on the street, layers of paint on walls, or, as here, drops of paint which have dripped to the floor. Ívar is thus attracted above all to the mutability, and the cycle, of materials and ideas.

Ívar’s works are installations, in which he often uses projectors and photographs, as well as a variety of industrial materials.

Ívar began his studies in 1971 at the Icelandic School of Arts and Crafts (forerunner of the Iceland Academy of the Arts), and pursued further studies in the Netherlands 1977-80.

Programme:

Sunday 17 February, 3 p.m.
Hafnarhús – Run to Waste
Artist´s talk with Ívar Valgarðsson.

Handout (pdf)
Further details (pdf).