Becoming a Shape of a Land(Scape)
5/8 – 7/8/2020
OUTVERT ART SPACE, Ísafjörður, Iceland
“In the Westfjords I wonder, what is a land, what is a landscape? Is it just a soil we are walking on? The terra is taken as a fixed entity, as a solid background, a nicely folded curtain of the play. Grasping these enchanting layers, veins, and wrinkles of the mountainous space, I sense intensely here that the Earth is a moving, shaping, breathing being. The scenery is so spectacular here, that it makes me humble, and very tiny.
I “monsterize” the shape of the land, I deconstruct its shape and then recreate the forms by drawing, layering memories, as a dream. The stain becomes an important mark as an intended line: „While touch offers the sensation of tactility on the surface, stain provides the seepage, leakiness, and bodily presence of the medium itself.“ (Kenner 2017:101) Colors affected by the summer light, haziness by the clouds. Mythical animals sneak in from the Icelandic folktales. I animate the Earth as an uncertain form of becoming, constantly changing the shape, wobbling as a tongue, changing its state, never still, as a clay. The landscape becomes an abstract shape, becomes a creature.”
Britta Benno (1984) is a drawing and printmaking artist living and working in Tallinn, Estonia. She is interested in various techniques and materials and the new perspectives that appear when they are contrasted and combined. Benno graduated with bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the printmaking department at the Estonian Academy of Arts. Currently, she is studying in a doctoral school at the Estonian Academy of Arts, her artistic research is about Thinking in Layers, Worlding in Layers: Posthuman Landscapes in Extended Drawings and Prints. Britta has been staying and working in Ísafjörður for a month as an artist-in-residence nominated by the ArtsIceland residency program and her residency is supported by the Cultural Endowment of Estonia.
Britta is currently taking part in the ArtsIceland residency program in Ísafjörður and the works exhibited at the gallery are based on the research she has been working on during her stay in Ísafjörður.
At the opening, the artist will give a brief talk and answer some questions starting 5:30.
https://www.facebook.com/events/690324488219219/
OUTVERT ART SPACE / Gallerí Úthverfa
opið eftir samkomulagi / open by appointment
ArtsIceland – Aðalstræti 22 – 400 Ísafjörður
www.kolsalt.is +354 868 1845 galleryoutvert@gmail.com
