SÍM

Gallerie Käytävä
Helsinki, Finnland

20.01 - 01.03. 2026.

Á sýningunni má sjá vídeóverk og innsetningar eftir Gunnar Jónsson, auk ljósmynda, skúlptúra og innsetningar eftir Ólöfu Dómhildi Jóhannsdóttur. Náttúran í kringum Ísafjörð leikur í henni lykilhlutverk, bæði í videóverkum Gunnars og innsetningum Ólafar þar sem keramik og ljósmyndir varpa ljósi á samband manns og náttúru. Inn í verkin fléttast valin textabrot úr bókum Satu Rämö sem einnig eiga sögusvið á Ísafirði og mynda á þann máta samofið samtal milli myndlistar og texta, þar sem náttúra, tilfinningar og skynjun mannsins eru í forgrunni.

Fólk sem hyggst sækja sýninguna er bent á að hafa samband í tölvupósti til að finna tíma: helsinki@utn.is

Verkefnið er styrkt af Mugg.
Muggur styrktarsjóður er samstarfsverkefni SÍM og Myndstefs og Reykjavíkurborgar.

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In the exhibition the three exhibiting artists draw their inspiration from Ísafjörður, a town shaped by the Westfjords of Iceland, where steep mountains meet the North Atlantic and daily life is closely attuned to weather, light, and seasonal rhythm. In a place where the land is both enclosing and expansive, nature becomes an active presence that informs not only what is seen, but how it is felt and understood. The artists respond to this environment through imagery and text, translating the contours of the landscape, the movement of water, and the shifting qualities of light into visual and written forms. Their works reflect a shared sensitivity to place-based knowledge, where creativity emerges from lived proximity to the land and sea, and where imagination and spirit are shaped by attention to the cycles, silences, and forces that define life in Ísafjörður.

Gunnar Jónsson works primarily with video and installation. His work often revolves around place and proximity to the sea, in ways that are both melancholic and poetic. His installation is both an autobiographical and intimate exhibition where the mapping of a town is made through skin and landscape, through creases and shadows, through rays and folds. His installation icludes a video piece in which furrowed brows merge with mountain ridges, reflecting both their presence and the solitude that resides within them. The second is a series of watercolor drawings based on data, processed through the geographic information system software QGIS, in which the sun’s impact on the surrounding mountains was measured, mapped, and then interpreted in watercolor.

Ólöf Dómhildur Jóhannsdóttir works with different mediums. In this exhibition a water fountain draws on the surrounding Icelandic landscape, where ocean, weather, and terrain exist in constant circulation. Echoing the movement of tides and streams that shape the coastline, the work treats water not as a static element but as a living system, one that flows, returns, and transforms. Within the exhibition space, the fountain becomes a reminder of shared ecological rhythms, situating the manmade environment within broader cycles of nature. Its continuous circulation gestures toward sustainability as attentiveness rather than extraction: a practice of reuse, care, and awareness of water as a finite yet renewing resource.

Novelist Satu Rämö is known for weaving Icelandic nature and the lived realities of its people into the narrative fabric of her crime novel Hildur, set in the Westfjords. In the exhibition, selected sentences from the novel, reflecting the landscape, light, weather, and social texture of life in Iceland, are presented in dialogue with the exhibited artworks within the residence of the embassy. Rather than functioning as illustration, Rämö’s words act as a parallel register, where literary observation meets visual interpretation. Through this encounter, the Icelandic environment emerges as more than a backdrop: it becomes a shared point of reference shaping perception, emotion, and cultural memory across both text and image.