Baer Dölum, Iceland, 1943
Amsterdam, The Netherlands, 2024
Over the past 40 years Hreinn Fridfinnsson (1943, Iceland) has forged a delicate and highly personal style that is conceptual in spirit and lyrical in tone, unassuming in material yet powerful in its effects, and above all attuned to the hidden poetry and mysterious epiphanies latent within our experience of the world.
Fridfinnsson’s work moves easily among various media, such as photography, sculpture, texts, installation and, more recently, video. It is often structured around dualities and reversals – between left and right, past and present, near and far, interior and exterior, empty and full, light and shadow, seen and unseen, dreams and waking reality. Hence Fridfinnsson’s frequent employment of mirrors, which not only reflect (and thereby double), but also reverse that which has been doubled. Other motifs in Fridfinnsson’s work include dreams, literature, music and the passage of time.
When working with objects, Fridfinnsson often explores material qualities and textures of the objects themselves as well as the perceptual fields, such as shadows and reflections, generated by their specific placement. Fridfinnsson frequently uses simple materials – such as paint stirrers, clear glass, or plain cardboard – that call less attention to themselves than to the more elusive effects they give rise to. These sculptures, in which Fridfinnsson’s manipulation is limited to a non-intrusive yet precise minimum, tend away from allegory and metaphor, instead foregrounding the impact of their immediate, physical presence.
