Scener från ett landskap

Scener från ett landskap was my third solo exhibition and my first exhibition in Stockholm at Galleri Bellman, Södermalm. The art exhibition was in collaboration with the Embassy of Iceland in Stockholm and Galleri Bellman. The exhibition combines Icelandic and Swedish landscapes in reliefs in a modern way. It is based on my study of Icelandic concrete portraits.

In my last exhibition, held in the summer of 2022, the main subject was vegetation, and it was an informative process to interpret vegetation in the form I work with, as there are certain contrasts in the rough form of the relief and the delicate vegetation. I intend to widen the perspective this time, zoom out and take in the scenery. The visuals of the exhibition therefore interweave these two nations, and in the reliefs, I interpret the different landscapes of the two countries, so it becomes a kind of comparative study of the rough landscape of Iceland and the soft one found here in Sweden.

The Icelandic landscape is so vast, while the Swedish landscape draws you in because there are so many forests or hills that obscure your view. This obvious difference soon came to my mind while walking in Swedish nature. As I studied the landscape better, I also noticed how rock types and rock tunnels differ from what we know back home in Iceland. The colors are different and the same can be said about the roughness of nature. I want to convey this landscape in my reliefs, which have many differences from abstract paintings in a strict surface style, even though my works have strong models in nature.

Thoughts on landscape…

Is there a way to define Icelandic landscape? Many Icelandic artists have pondered over this question throughout the past decades and maybe rationally so. It is fair to say that generally speaking, Icelanders have a tendency to think of the nature and landscape of Iceland as unique. Are they wrong in making that conclusion? Not necessarily, as the idea of a close connection to nature plays a big part in the identity of many Icelanders, but perhaps this common view might be one of the reasons why many artists have addressed this question in their art.

One can say that there are many dimensions to this particular question, posed here in the first line, especially in the context of art that deals with the landscape of Iceland. Because it raises another questions, such as: What is that makes landscape Icelandic? Or Swedish, for that matter?

It is only natural for an Icelandic artist that moves to another country to explore questions that are related to nationality and landscape in the artistic process. That is exactly what Pétur Geir has done in the works found in the exhibition, “Scener från ett landskap”. Here, he invites guests to explore the similarities, differences and nuances between these landscapes by combining motifs from both Icelandic and Swedish nature.

Grétar Þór Sigurðsson