Concept
“Elastic Hours”
While Sequences uses the term “real time” to refer to time-based media, “Sequences VIII: Elastic Hours” considers how the term might be applied to the experience of art making, exploring how artists manipulate time as a raw material. Stretching, echoing, and inverting hours, the works included in Sequences VIII often go beyond standardized metrics such as clocks to investigate alternative systems for measuring and experiencing time. These works remind us that our daily rhythms are not solely determined by tradition and locality but also rooted in the natural forces, beyond our control. The passage of time is acutely palpable in Iceland in particular, as with the region’s seasonal extremes in the duration of daylight hours and mercurial weather conditions. In charting the passage of time through unconventional means, the artists included bring heightened awareness and critical insights into our relationships with objects, society, and the universe around us.
Honorary artist
Joan Jonas
Joan Jonas
Since the late 1960s, Joan Jonas (b. 1936 New York. Lives and works in New York) has created groundbreaking multidisciplinary works that investigate time-based structures and the politics of spectatorship. Her projects often simultaneously incorporate elements of theater, dance, sound, text, drawing, sculpture, and video projection. They rely on alternate identities, narrative symbols and threads, but they also refuse linearity, privileging instead the doubled and fractured tale. A pioneer of video art, Jonas began using the Portapak video system in 1970 to explore the shifts that occur from the camera to the projection to the body and the space of the live action. For her recent videos, performances, and installations, Jonas has frequently collaborated with musicians and dancers and has drawn from literary sources and mythic tales in realizing her multi-layered explorations. For Sequences, Jonas will present a solo exhibition at the Living Art Museum, which will include a selection of works from throughout her career—from her early videos Wind (1968) and Song Delay (1973) to stream or river or flight or pattern (2016/2017), a project that she conceived on recent travels to Venice, Singapore, Nova Scotia, and Vietnam. She will also present an ongoing experimental lecture demonstration at Tjarnarbíó on Sunday, October 8, featuring a new collaboration with Icelandic composer and musician María Huld Markan.
Image: Joan Jonas, Song Delay, 1973, film still. © 2017 Joan Jonas / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
Artists
Helena Aðalsteinsdóttir (b. 1990 Reykjavík. Lives and works in Amsterdam)
Birgir Andrésson (b. 1955 Westman Islands, Iceland. d. 2007 Reykjavík)
Hildigunnur Birgisdóttir (b. 1980 Reykjavík. Lives and works in Reykjavík)
Ásgerður Birna Björnsdóttir (b. 1990 Reykjavík. Lives and works in Amsterdam)
Elín Hansdóttir (b. 1980 Reykjavík. Lives and works in Reykjavík)
David Horvitz (b. 1982 Los Angeles. Lives and works in Los Angeles) with Jófríður Ákadóttir (b. 1994 Reykjavík. Lives and works in Reykjavík)
Anna K.E. (b. 1986, Tbilisi, Georgia. Lives and works in New York and Düsseldorf, Germany) and Florian Meisenberg (b. 1980, Berlin. Lives and works in New York and Düsseldorf, Germany)
Alicja Kwade (b. 1979 Katowice, Poland. Lives and works in Berlin)
Florence Lam (b. 1992, Vancouver, Canada. Lives and works in Reykjavík)
Nancy Lupo (b. 1983 Flagstaff, Arizona. Lives and works in Los Angeles)
Sara Magenheimer (b. 1981, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Lives and works in New York)
Rebecca Erin Moran (b. 1976 Greeley, Colorado. Lives and works in Reykjavík)
Eduardo Navarro (b. 1979 Buenos Aires, Argentina. Lives and works in Buenos Aires, Argentina)
Ragnar Helgi Ólafsson (b. 1971 Reykjavík. Lives and works in Reykjavík)
Roman Ondak (b. 1966 Žilina, Slovakia. Lives and works in Bratislava, Slovakia)
Habbý Ósk (b. 1979 Akureyri, Iceland. Lives and works in New York)
Agnieszka Polska (b. 1985, Lublin, Poland. Lives and works in Berlin)
Aki Sasamoto (b. 1980 Yokohama, Japan. Lives and works in New York)
Cally Spooner (b. 1983 Ascot, England. Lives and works in London and Athens, Greece)
Una Sigtryggsdóttir (b. 1990, Reykjavik. Lives and works in Reykjavik)
Visit
For those travelling onwards to mainland Europe or US, Icelandair offers a stopover in Iceland at no extra cost.
For press accreditation please contact Kristína Aðalsteinsdóttir at info@icelandicartcenter.is
Sponsors
Team
The board
Klara Þórhallsdóttir, appointed to board by The Icelandic Art Center
Ingibjörg Sigurjónsdóttir, appointed to board by Kling & Bang gallery
Þorgerður Ólafsdóttir, appointed to board by The Living Art Museum
Helga Páley Friðþjófsdóttir, designated board member
Sindri Leifsson, designated board member