Untitled

„Biodiversity“ is a concept that comprises all living nature, its building blocks and its various manifestations. Biodiversity connotes natural and man-made diversity at all stages of life. The concept „biosphere“ is also used with a similar meaning. It is not only important to preserve different species, but also genetic diversity amongst individuals within one species. In this artwork, you’ll find many different varieties of moorland spotted orchid. It is important to protect different individuals from the same species since this leads to the evolution and adaptation of organisms to new habitats and environments. In Iceland, we find many vulnerable and particular habitats which conservation is of great importance. Diversity is very important for the Icelandic ecosystem.

Eggert Pétursson’s visual world centers on plants found in Icelandic nature. The perspective is always highly defined, as if the artist is seeing into the topsoil. Most of the works are untitled, but the subject is often a certain flower, a plant family or plants within a specific area. Here we see all the genera of the orchid family, (lat. orchidaceae) - the moorland spotted orchid, the long-bracted green orchid, the northern green orchid, the small white orchid, the coralroot and bird’s nest orchid - that grow in Iceland, evenly distributed over the visual plane. The artist’s precise method makes it easy for connoisseurs to identify the flowers. And yet, in the artist’s mind the main issue is not the type of species, but the memory of the plant as it is found in nature. The memory can be recent or it may derive from childhood. Eggert’s paintings are not copies of nature but subjective works that play the colour spectrum, while the delicate hues sing and ring in harmony. Eggert turns his attention to the present global threat to untouched natural environments as man ruthlessly attempts to anthropomorphise his world.