August 29th, 2024 - February 9th, 2025, 2025
Francisco Carolinum
Linz, Austria
Curated by: Susanne Watzenboeck
Sigurður Guðjónsson
Scopes of Inner Transit
Francisco CarolinumLinz, Austria
30.08.2024 - 12.01.2025
Sigurður Guðjónsson’s art plays with the boundaries of those realities that lie outside our everyday sphere of perception. In his impressive time-based media works, the Icelandic artist repeatedly deals with mankind’s technological achievements, which also serve as tools or media in his art. Guðjónsson shows objects from perspectives that make their presence appear intensely intimate and enigmatic at the same time. In microscopic close-ups, he observes movements and forms that result from the contact that objects make with their environment. The examination of natural elements and the parameters of time, space, and perception are also recurring themes in his work. Guðjónsson’s type of investigation always takes place on an acoustic as well as visual level. He utilizes the potential of film as a medium that allows him to reproduce an interplay of image and sound in order to create a maximum symbiosis of both sensory impressions. Complex soundscapes and rhythmic images involve viewers in a synesthetic experience that expands their own field of perception and generates a new kind of sensation.
Guðjónsson achieved international fame with his installation "Perpetual Motion" (curated by Mónica Bello, CERN Geneva), with which he represented Iceland at the 59th Venice Biennale in 2022. Named after an age-old dream of humanity, the "perpetuum mobile", the machine that keeps moving without energy supply or time limit, the work shows close-ups of magnetically attracted metal dust in a six-meter-high split screen. The sound layer, which was created in collaboration with composer Valgeir Sigurðsson, is also dedicated to exploring the materiality of the matter pulsating across the screens. Layered electronic sounds, split via granular synthesis into small components called grains, fill the space with continuous vibration. The fusion of image and sound transforms the space into a multi-sensory sculpture that invites a focused, meditative experience. In "Scopes of Inner Transit", the artist’s first solo exhibition in Austria, "Perpetual Motion" will be shown together with three other recent works by Guðjónsson.
Curated by Susanne Watzenboeck