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Arngunnur Yr's mastery of painting and the clarity of her vision enable her to take risks that others shy away from. She does not worry about the tension between accessibility and sophistication, but simply embraces it. She looks for what is fundamental in our physical and emotional worlds, and then explores. What does Arngunnur Yr find? This is not a simple question to answer. Perhaps a better starting place would be to ask: What do we as viewers find?
Technically, Arngunnur Yr's artworks tend to be oil on wood or paper. Formally, her images are most often essentialized landscapes structured around a horizon line, with a foreground, a background, and a sense of vast enveloping space. Arngunnur Yr purposely chooses this comfortable and accessible image because of its seductive qualities. She is aware of what this landscape embodies, and chooses it to manipulate it. The use of such a traditional landscape structure, with its attendant familiarity for the viewer, frees Arngunnur Yr to push the limits of her painting technique.
She uses a distinct palette that at first glance seems poetic and refined, but in Arngunnur Yr's work, always beware your first impressions. After methodically building up her landscapes with over 100 layers of paint, she often attacks the very surfaces she has created. Working subtractively, she uses various techniques to remove the finely rendered forms. This has the effect of revealing the various layers of paint and exposing her labor, acknowledging the element of chance and lack of control, setting up tensions as the exposed colors often clash and undermine the very harmony that she worked so hard to achieve. Arngunnur Yr's works are extremely beautiful paintings, but they always contain passages that are raw, exposed, and vulnerable. In her process, she takes a seemingly perfect painting, attacks it, and ends up with a more complex, subtle, and perhaps most important, human work. Her extraordinary painting technique allows her to create a physical world; yet this
same technique moves the landscape from the physical world to one that is emotional, and for many, spiritual. It is not the emotion of quaint harmony, but rather a faith, hard-earned and then humbled. Her true insight is knowing that what is most beautiful is perhaps not the most desirable. She recognizes that the ability to paint images that are merely beautiful is not enough, because in some fundamental way they deny that which is most human. How is all this possible? Because Arngunnur Yr paints with no fear.
Stephan F. F. Jost, Director Mills College Art Museum Oakland California
CV
Born 1962 Reykjavik, Iceland
Education
1992 Mills College, Oakland, CA. MFA in painting.
1989-90 Gerrit Rietveldt Academie, Amsterdam, Holland, Artist in Residence.
1986 San Francisco Art Institute. BFA in painting.
1982-84 Icelandic College of Arts and Crafts, Reykjavik
Selected Solo Exhibitions
2009
Distant, Hosfelt Gallery, San Francisco, CA
2008
Transcendent, Reykjanes Art Museum, Reykjanesbae, Iceland
Euphora, Gallery Turpentine, Reykjavik, Iceland
2007
Firmament, Gallerie Immanence, Paris, France
Land I Saw, Hallgrimskirkja, Iceland
2006
Rapture is a Cool Place, Mills College Art Museum, Oakland, CA, (with Timothy Horn)
Firmament, Ampersand International Arts, San Francisco, CA
2005
Hosfelt Gallery, San Francisco
Firmament, Gallery Turpentine, Reykjavik, with Amanda Hughen
2004
All and None, Hafnarborg Art Museum, Hafnarfjordur, Iceland
Verslunnarrad, Chamber of Commerce, Reykjavik, Iceland
2003 Ventura College Art Gallery, Ventura, CA
2002
Ampersand International Arts, San Francisco, CA
Mills College Art Museum, Oakland, CA
2001
Gallery Saevar Karl, Reykjavik, Iceland
2000
Gerdarsafn Museum, Kopavogur, Iceland
1999
Gallery Saevar Karl, Reykjavik, Iceland
EFTA Gallery, Brussels, Belgium
1996
Hafnarborg Museum, Hafnarfjordur, Iceland
Arctic Horizon Gallery, Reykjavik, Iceland
Icelandic Bridge Foundation, Reykjavik
Reynihlid, Myvatn, Iceland
1995
Icelandic University of Education Gallery, Reykjavik, Iceland
A Naestu Grosum, Reykjavik, Iceland
1994
Living Art Museum, Reykjavik., Iceland
1993
Hulduholar Gallery, Mosfellssveit, Iceland
Show and Tell Gallery, San Francisco, CA
1991 Kjarvalsstadir Municipal Museum, Reykjavik, Iceland
1989 Gallery Nyhofn, Reykjavik, Iceland
1987
MEDIA, San Francisco, CA
Living Art Museum, Reykjavik, Iceland
1985
Galerie TOI, Berlin, Germany
Selected Group Exhibitions
2009
The Coldest Winter I Ever Spent Was a Summer in San Francisco, Hosfelt
Gallery, San Francisco, CA
2007
Landscapes: Rural and Urban Realities, Triton Museum of Art, Santa Clara, CA
2006
Painting After 1980, National Gallery of Iceland
2004
Paint, SFMOMA Artists Gallery, San Francisco
2003
Paint Junkies, Michael Martin Galleries, San Francisco
They Say Hello, The Open Gallery, Reykjavik, Iceland
Works on Paper, BACA, Berkeley, CA
2000
Ecstasy 2000, Akureyri Museum, Akureyri, Iceland
1998
Natura, Charlottenborg Museum, Copenhagen, Denmark
Voyage, Nordic Heritage Museum, Seattle, Oregon
The Luggage Store, San Francisco. 3 person exhibition
Anti Pessimismus, Downtown Artist's Society, Budapest, Hungary
1997
Coins Gallery, London, England
1995
The Thin Clear Line, T. Higbee Gallery, San Francisco
Epicenter, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco
Turlock Cultural Center, Turlock, CA
Paradise Gallery, Sarasota, Florida
1990
Arts Commission Gallery, San Francisco
1989
Gallery Nyhofn, Reykjavik, Iceland
1989
Show and Tell Gallery, San Francisco
1987
Reconnaissance, MEDIA, San Francisco
1986
Mary Adress Gallery, San Francisco
1985
Samkvaemispafinn, Egisstadir, Iceland
Here and Now, Reykjavik Municipal Museum, Iceland
Public Art Commissions
Commission for DeCode Genetics, Reykjavik, 2000.
Mural for Dublin Elementary School, Dublin, California, 1998.
Mural for Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, 1992.
Selected Awards And Grants
2005 Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant
2003 BACA Juror’s Award
2002 Agricultural Bank Culture Award, Reykjavik
2000 Ministry of Culture work grant for artists, Reykjavik
Svavar Gudnason and Asta Eiriksdottir Memorial Award, Reykjavik
1997 Ministry of Culture work grant for artists, Reykjavik
1996 Work grant from the city of Gardabaer, Iceland
1993 Ministry of Culture work grant for artists, Reykjavik
1989 Ministry of Culture work grant for artists, Reykjavik
Selected Bibliography
2009 Prior, Ginny. In the Mix: Six Questions, Oakland Magazine, November.
2008 Ingolfsson, Aoalsteinn. Transcendent exhibition catalogue, Reykjanes Art
Museum.
2006 Porges, Maria. Going For Baroque, Rapture exhibition catalogue, Mills College
Art Museum.
2004 Jost, Stephan. “When Beauty is Not Enough,” All and None exhibition
catalogue,Hafnarborg Art Museum.
2002 Buuck, David. Amanda Hughen and Arngunnur Yr at Ampersand, Artweek,
Dec 2002/Jan 2003.
Selected Public Collections
City of Gardabaer, Iceland
City of Reykjanesbaer, Iceland
Gerdarsafn Museum, Kopavogur, Iceland
Gerduberg Cultural Center, Reykjavik, Iceland
Geysir Center, Haukadalur, Iceland
Hafnarborg Museum of Art, Hafnarfjordur, Iceland
Kjarvalsstadir Municipal Museum, Reykjavik, Iceland
Mills College Art Museum, Oakland, CA
Reykjanesbaer Jr. College, Iceland
Reykjavik Art Museum, Reykjavik, Iceland
University of Iceland
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