P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center in New York is currently showing an installation by one of lifeiscarbon’s favorite Icelandic artists, Katrín Sigurdardóttir. High Plane V is Katrín Sigurdardóttir’s first solo project in New York. The site-specific artwork, which inhabits P.S.1’s second and third floor corner galleries, is on view until May 7 next year so there’s still plenty of time to go see it.
High Plane V depicts an artificial landscape, made of very basic construction materials: blue insulation material and white paint. The panorama, which is a combination of imagined and real Arctic topographies, has been constructed on a temporary floor of the gallery. In order to view the landscape, visitors have to climb up step ladders and poke their heads through holes in the ceiling above. The miniature landscape invites various interpretations – mountain ridges, icebergs, glaciers, or perhaps archipelagos seen from above the clouds.
In her work, Sigurdardóttir merges nature, architecture, and design, inspired by her native Iceland as well as New York, her home for the last twelve years. From conventional woodshop materials, such as plywood, polystyrene, and foam core, she creates miniature versions of imaginary and real environments that are often packaged in crates or suitcases that can be unfolded into room-sized installations. These complex architectural works evoke memories of fragile childhood scale models and places in the imagination.
We like the fact Sigurdardottir’s miniature landscapes in crates are always shipped as is, with no additional packing, so that they collect transport tags and other travel scars. Here is an artist who seems to be trying to deal with the polarized nature of the love that she feels for barren Scandinavian landscapes combined with a love for the dense cityscapes of places like New York. Somehow she has found a way to encapsulate that love in boxes, and those imaginary landscapes can then travel any where in the world. There’s almost a Japanese sensibility at play in her careful attention to detail and the complex design of the boxes. And we have to confess that for us, her artworks conjure up very real landscapes, stir up powerful emotions and evoke strong childhood memories.
Katrín Sigurdardóttir was born in Reykjavik, Iceland in 1967 and received her BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute, San Francisco, California and her MFA degree from Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers University in New Brunswick. Siguardardottir has had solo exhibitions at various venues, such as Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo in Torino, Italy and Reykjavik Museum of Art in Reykjavik, Iceland. Siguardardottir’s recent group exhibitions include The Here and Now at the Renaissance Society in Chicago, USA (2005), Odd Lots at Queens Museum of Art, Cabinet Magazine and White Columns in New York, USA (2005), and Nordic Contemporary Sculpture 1985-2005 at Wanas Foundation, Sweden (2005). She currently lives and works in New York, USA.
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