SÍM

We warmly welcome you to the opening of Anna Rún Tryggvadóttir’s exhibition Chromatic displaying a new series of watercolour work stemming from the artist's ongoing research project Multipolar which explores the history of the magnetic field of the planet. A large part of this project will be exhibited in a solo exhibition at the Icelandic National Gallery in April 2024. Opening Saturday 28th October 2023
17 – 20h

In her praxis Tryggvadóttir explores invisible forces in nature in a quest of furthering her understanding of our surroundings. In a collaboration with leading specialists in the Earth's magnetic field she explores possible artistic scenarios where the magnetic force can influence situational spaces. Chromatic presents one of those scenarios. In the series Magnetic Allure Tryggvadóttir stages watercolour performances where the water renders the colour in an autonomous process affected by magnets. Pitch black iron based particles move across the topography of the paper, pulled towards different magnetic forces lined up at various points on the paper. These impressive and playful works are mesmerizing as they blur the lines of material and artistic agency. The task of deciphering where the magnetic process stops and Tryggvadóttir's manipulation begins becomes impossible.

In her practice, the artist Anna Rún Tryggvadóttir (b.1980 in Reykjavík) turns to the agency of natural phenomena - from the planet´s geomagnetic field and its influences on mineral structures; the biology of dying trees; the chromatography of pigments; to the animation of salt etc. She studies the underlying physical, chemical or biological features, lending these forms of agencies as the central structuring element of her artwork. The work takes on the form of material performances, sculptural installations, and multi-dimensional documentations of these cultivated and catalyzed processes. She devises technologically driven systems which explore kinetic and cyclical behaviors in a staging of an ever-folding moment engaged in perspectives of vulnerability and interdependencies. Her work speaks for physical, emotional, and material spaces that are somehow in between, undefined, or against a monumental or even singular outcome.