Án titils

Georg Guðni

• Year : 2003
• Height : 280 cm
• Width : 205 cm
• Category : Málverk
• Sub-category : Olíumálverk

In 1998, Georg Guðni held a large solo exhibition at the Kjarvalsstaðir gallery. Gunnar J. Árnason writes: “Georg Guðni has ventured inland, up to the heathlands and into the middle of the country, to the wilderness, the barren sands not shaped by rivers but belonging to the untouched and desert place beyond the glaciers. The heath is a landscape in between. It is between mountain and valley, and not in any specific place. Valleys and mountains serve to mark a certain focus which captures the attention and determines the composition of the painting. The heathland, on the other hand, much like the desert sands, has no centre and therefore no particular landmark which catches one's eye. There is no specific place where we go to see the heathland. The heathland is here and there, between one place and another, with no distinguishing features, but a collective term for the way from one place to another.” (Gunnar J. Árnason: Georg Guðni: Yfirlitssýning/Retrospective 2003). In his last pieces, such as Untitled, Georg Guðni “is dealing with a state of mind which happens when nothing catches your eye and the landscape drifts past as through a car window. A kind of meditative state. But this is not a state of mind that has anything to do with Romantic elation, or sublimation in 19th century landscape painting, because Georg Guðni's paintings do not entail any allusion to the higher reality beyond the sensory experience, they are absolutely true to what is experienced as we carry it inside us. … The paintings express the feeling which follows us after a direct sensory experience has passed, the general impact it has on us, not tied to any particular definable landmarks or shapes. These paintings of sand dunes in the middle of the country can be interpreted as a challenge to us to stop trying to constantly place the land within a frame, focussing on specific phenomena in order to enjoy be able to enjoy it…” (Gunnar J. Árnason: ibid, p. 14).

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