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Hafnarborg Museum, Iceland

23. February - 17. March 2013

About the exhibition:

Fractions
Sirra Sigrún Sigurðardóttir

The works of Sirra Sigrún Sigurðardóttir on display in the exhibition Fractions, reflect both on art historical and philosophical questions, as well as the quest of beauty. Each piece has elements that touch the viewer in different ways, while interpreting information or theories that the viewer might be familiar with, sense, or not notice at all. Art history is riddled with quests for beauty, while social influences form or effect what is deciphered or perceived as beauty. The quest for beauty can therefore take on several forms. Scientists present their theories in equations where each symbol holds meaning for those who know how to read them. In the eyes of the scientist the equation as a whole has aesthetic value. This value is not only in what instantly meets the eye but also in the deciphering of the symbols, the message they carry, and the knowledge they convey. Thus, the beauty of the equation is not the same for those who know the world behind it and those who look at it in the context of form studies or simply as beautiful writing.

Fractions contains new works made in different media: sculpture, photography, the wall piece Illustration, and a wall drawing of transverse lines making up coordinates. The sculpture Oblique is in part created from a found object – a plinth from the museum’s storages. In art history a plinth is intricately linked to art, it is not art in itself but its foundation, and often a symbol of glorification. In Sirra’s work this basic form is not left untouched but stretched and pulled to take on a different form. The plinth seems to reach into another dimension, where it is distorted and seems to approach a two dimensional image of itself. This transformation can be compared to the metamorphoses of matter reflecting on the forces that influence it at each given time.

The photo diptych, Set, depicts on one hand the blue morning sky in the darkness of winter, and on the other a blue start-up screen of a computer. The work shows two different windows, with the same perspective. The two windows form a pair and coincide while rotating around a subjective axis between technology and nature, anaxis through the human sensory field. This type of axis can be discerned in a different context in Sirra’s works where conflicting values meet; nature and technology, two-dimensional and three-dimensional, blindness and sight. This is apparent in the work Illustration; colours disappear and appear depending on the light, movement, and the position of the viewer. Its round form is reminiscent of a pie chart used to depict information on the proportions of different values. The charts rotate around an axis, colours come and go, everything is subject to change and nothing is an actual constant.

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Ólöf K. Sigurðardóttir, director