Coincidentally, We See Abstractly

The exhibition brings together three groups of artists of different generations and backgrounds. While each group may differ in its approach to art, they are nonetheless united in their exploration of abstraction -- whether it is intentional or not.

One group includes artists who explored the ideology and aesthetics of abstraction in the years around World War II. These artists consciously expanded the world of visual perception through a dynamic dialogue with art history, seeking new and personal approaches in their imagery.

A second group comprises artists with disabilities, who work directly and freely on the picture plane and engage in a powerful dialogue with their inner emotional worlds, as well as their experience of the world and of art.

A third group includes the work contemporary artists, who received formal training in art and work in a wide range of approaches, including abstraction. They come from a generation of artists that have emerged at a time when almost any form of art is permissible and possible. The dialogue with art history is not necessarily their highest priority; rather, these artists are generally concerned with a material reality, where commonplace objects and phenomena attain new and unexpected meanings and contexts.

The exhibition offers an opportunity to examine how artists working from various approaches might be considered in a new light when viewed alongside one another. Will the visitor perceive a work by Guðmunda Andrésdóttir in a new and unexpected way when it is juxtaposed with a work by Ásmundur Stefánsson? Will we see Anna Hrund Másdóttir‘s art differently when we view it in proximity to a work by Nína Tryggvadóttir? In a sense, this exhibition is an attempt to widen our understanding of the concept of the abstract, at the same time that it brings together worlds that hitherto have not tended to overlap.