Kersti
10-06-2010, 08:56 AM
A tatter on one of the mailing lists has found this gem of an article from January 2006 -
Icelandic artist Hildur Bjarnadottir doesn't ignore art and intellectual history; she gives it a newer, smarter, better made/time tested and reflexively subversive cloth to wrap it in. She has already received kudos from Art in America (http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1248/is_10_91/ai_109667985) and Artnet (http://www.artnet.com/magazine_pre2000/reviews/laster/laster10-19-99.asp) but her latest show, Overlap at Pulliam Deffenbaugh Gallery (http://www.pulliamdeffenbaugh.com/index.cfm) shows her as the fully developed, unpatronizing and supremely deft contemporary virtuoso her earlier and more obvious work had always pointed towards.
Somewhere between Modernism's impulse to push beyond the mundane and Duchamp's brilliant "so what" mundane ready-mades (later restated in Pop art), traditions became unfashionable. Simply put, making things as a "practitioner of craft" was so out by the heyday of Jeff Koons. Fabrication was simply something to be subcontracted out. (Really there is nothing wrong with that as long as the inverse was allowed as well) Yet, by 1987 or so it became an intellectual no no to form a deep personal connection to the past through practicing a craft. Carrying on a tradition somehow was perceived as soft headed as some (Fukuyama (http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/us/fukuyama.htm), Derrida, and Deleuze) debated the end of history... as if all connection to the past had been shattered and no further paradigm shifts could occur. Some intellectual end game? Hilarious!
In fact, tradition is now back with a vengeance and oh my what sharp teeth you have Grandma. One can see it everywhere; moralizing fairytales, religious fundamentalism and handicrafts have all become big time cultural discussion points (and pastimes) if one takes The Lord of the Rings, Titanic, the Bush Presidency/Al Qaeda, and the knitting/embroidery craze into account.
...
http://www.portlandart.net/archives/hildurdoodle.jpg
Doodling (detail)
One of my favorite pieces in the show is "Doodling", many people and a huge percentage of the artists I've met doodle all the time, often with a cheap blue ball point pen. Bjarnadottir takes this activity and morphs it into a whimsical tatted yarn lace doily died blue with ballpoint pen ink. It would be mostly just an academic stunt if it weren't executed during a series of long family phone calls. We have all been there and Bjarnadottir acts as some kind of domestic alchemist imbuing the inevitable and often boring with wonder. Yes, skill and a little sharp thinking can lead to good things.
...
I've always found it interesting when a virtuoso only has pride in the effect, not the practice and Bjarnadottir certainly falls into that category. Still what is most telling is how she created porcelain figurines of her three grandmothers as objects to venerate. Technically one really can't have three grandmothers but once again Bjarnadottir is messing with us (one is probably a great grandmother). These apparently are the women responsible for teaching her these traditional crafts which she is both practicing and updating as a living tradition. In Norse mythology there are three fates (Norns) that she may be referencing here as well. Leave it to an artist to utilize traditional handicrafts to both invoke and modify fate. Unlike a jazz traditionalist like Wynton Marsalis (http://www.wyntonmarsalis.net/main1.html), Bjarnadottir breaks tradition to save it. She ignores the domestic rules and pollutes contemporary tropes as fast as she can find them and if that isn't a way to confoundingly invigorate contemporary art and traditional roots I don't know what is.
A lesser artist would have stooped to text and more heavy handed connections, here only the flawless presentation and execution of the work is tight. The implications and effects are expansive. I simply can't look at ball point pens, doilies, tablecloths and Roy Rodgers the same way again. It seems like anything is possible with talent and an open mind.
I suggest that she could knit a shroud for Derrida and call it "Acts of Literature." If one accepts tradition as open to change, suddenly the fragmentation of history and experience isn't so overwhelming because talent can exist to reflexively subvert and reestablish itself. Talent is that which survives the autopsy of deconstruction (or is that just another word for critique). In this case Bjarnadottir has that elusive "it" in spades and merely needs a high profile project to make that point even more perfectly clear. Till then, this is one hot show.
Posted by Jeff Jahn (http://www.jeffjahn.com/) on January 25, 2006
Icelandic artist Hildur Bjarnadottir doesn't ignore art and intellectual history; she gives it a newer, smarter, better made/time tested and reflexively subversive cloth to wrap it in. She has already received kudos from Art in America (http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1248/is_10_91/ai_109667985) and Artnet (http://www.artnet.com/magazine_pre2000/reviews/laster/laster10-19-99.asp) but her latest show, Overlap at Pulliam Deffenbaugh Gallery (http://www.pulliamdeffenbaugh.com/index.cfm) shows her as the fully developed, unpatronizing and supremely deft contemporary virtuoso her earlier and more obvious work had always pointed towards.
Somewhere between Modernism's impulse to push beyond the mundane and Duchamp's brilliant "so what" mundane ready-mades (later restated in Pop art), traditions became unfashionable. Simply put, making things as a "practitioner of craft" was so out by the heyday of Jeff Koons. Fabrication was simply something to be subcontracted out. (Really there is nothing wrong with that as long as the inverse was allowed as well) Yet, by 1987 or so it became an intellectual no no to form a deep personal connection to the past through practicing a craft. Carrying on a tradition somehow was perceived as soft headed as some (Fukuyama (http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/us/fukuyama.htm), Derrida, and Deleuze) debated the end of history... as if all connection to the past had been shattered and no further paradigm shifts could occur. Some intellectual end game? Hilarious!
In fact, tradition is now back with a vengeance and oh my what sharp teeth you have Grandma. One can see it everywhere; moralizing fairytales, religious fundamentalism and handicrafts have all become big time cultural discussion points (and pastimes) if one takes The Lord of the Rings, Titanic, the Bush Presidency/Al Qaeda, and the knitting/embroidery craze into account.
...
http://www.portlandart.net/archives/hildurdoodle.jpg
Doodling (detail)
One of my favorite pieces in the show is "Doodling", many people and a huge percentage of the artists I've met doodle all the time, often with a cheap blue ball point pen. Bjarnadottir takes this activity and morphs it into a whimsical tatted yarn lace doily died blue with ballpoint pen ink. It would be mostly just an academic stunt if it weren't executed during a series of long family phone calls. We have all been there and Bjarnadottir acts as some kind of domestic alchemist imbuing the inevitable and often boring with wonder. Yes, skill and a little sharp thinking can lead to good things.
...
I've always found it interesting when a virtuoso only has pride in the effect, not the practice and Bjarnadottir certainly falls into that category. Still what is most telling is how she created porcelain figurines of her three grandmothers as objects to venerate. Technically one really can't have three grandmothers but once again Bjarnadottir is messing with us (one is probably a great grandmother). These apparently are the women responsible for teaching her these traditional crafts which she is both practicing and updating as a living tradition. In Norse mythology there are three fates (Norns) that she may be referencing here as well. Leave it to an artist to utilize traditional handicrafts to both invoke and modify fate. Unlike a jazz traditionalist like Wynton Marsalis (http://www.wyntonmarsalis.net/main1.html), Bjarnadottir breaks tradition to save it. She ignores the domestic rules and pollutes contemporary tropes as fast as she can find them and if that isn't a way to confoundingly invigorate contemporary art and traditional roots I don't know what is.
A lesser artist would have stooped to text and more heavy handed connections, here only the flawless presentation and execution of the work is tight. The implications and effects are expansive. I simply can't look at ball point pens, doilies, tablecloths and Roy Rodgers the same way again. It seems like anything is possible with talent and an open mind.
I suggest that she could knit a shroud for Derrida and call it "Acts of Literature." If one accepts tradition as open to change, suddenly the fragmentation of history and experience isn't so overwhelming because talent can exist to reflexively subvert and reestablish itself. Talent is that which survives the autopsy of deconstruction (or is that just another word for critique). In this case Bjarnadottir has that elusive "it" in spades and merely needs a high profile project to make that point even more perfectly clear. Till then, this is one hot show.
Posted by Jeff Jahn (http://www.jeffjahn.com/) on January 25, 2006