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| Ingibjörg Magnadóttir / kjallari-basement: Kristín Helga Káradóttir |
| Obsession (Spreyjar) / kjallari-basement: Hérna niðri / Down here |
| 28. 01. 2006 - 19. 02. 2006 |
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Opens Saturday 28th of January at 5 pm
Text on Ingibjörg Magnadóttir on its way |
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An Excursus Down Here - Kristin Helga Karadottir
We see a woman traveling, struggling across an open field. There is no horizon, no landmarks, no frame of reference with which to identify this landscape. And above all, no beginning nor end to the kind of traversal that is documented here. We are offered instead the continuous movement of a figure, who ambles in a broken manner in the center of the screen as the camera swivels to track her. Her white billowing dress, introducing restless folds about her legs and arms, has a range of associations which identify the critical questions surrounding the work of Kristin Helga Karadottir.
Karadottir’s work is generally produced with an eye for a particular mise-en-scène; not only are the happenings within the video image scripted with the utmost attention towards suspense, but also the fact of “being-there,” of being situated in a particular time and space. Duration, directionality, rhythm, sublimity are all concepts which pervade her work in one way or another. This exhibition furthers this sensibility by setting forth a proposition conceived with specific reference to the architectural conditions of the Kling & Bang space in Reykjavik.
The vital motility of the artist’s white dress—eerily reminiscent of the effluent gowns of the late nineteenth-century American burlesque performer Loïe Fuller—is significantly reversed in the beach video. The artist lies at the edge of the sea as the waves of the incoming tide creep towards her and recede. The natural ebb and flow of the water sets Karadottir’s larger project into motion. Her black garb allows her to melt into the liminal fold separating land from sea. The water—standing tall, towering over the image, the night lights of Reykjavík pushed up as they are to the upper registers of the frame—behaves like a kind of “flowing-matter” (Deleuze) pointing to the temporality of the medium itself.
Umberto Eco describes “the slowing down techniques” writers use in fictional narratives as a “lingering in the wood.” This is a notion which ultimately represents the main subject of Karadottir’s work. As she waves down to us from the clouds above in the third video on view, we cannot help but wonder if the vantage point from down here is located somewhere between documentary, fiction and fantasy.
Alena Williams
© 2006 |
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Grandagarður 20 - 101 Reykjavík
kob@this.is |
