Gunnar Örn is an
autodidact Icelandic artist, but still one of
Icelands most acknowledge contemporary
artists. He presently lives in the
countryside of southern Iceland with
breathtaking view and history all around him.
Here he lives in close contact with nature,
animals and his family. His talent is in the
genes as seen above in a portrait of him by
his daughter, Snaebjörg, 5 years old at the
time.
Early works of Gunnar Örn
during the 1970:ies and 1980:ies might be
described as expressive surrealistic. These
works were at that time progressive,
especially during the 1970:ies, as the main
stream of Icelandic young contemporary
painters were working on abstract painting.
The head of the female figures in Gunnar
Örns works were often replaced by a
snake or
lizard - maybe a symbol of a cunning
person. The figures in his painting were also
often surrounded or embedded
in landscape. In Maelmstrom
the male is trapped in a natural whirlpool,
hanging on to the symbol of the opposit sex -
the lizard.
Gunnar Örn has also tried
another medium - the Icelandic greystone. His
works in greystone like Head
and Faces
illustrate well his imaginativeness and
vitality.
During the early 1990:ies the formal
figures disapear from the landscape, but
become a part of it - stones and spring foam
made faces which might be expressing spirits
hidden in nature, which were a common meaning
in Iceland during medieval times. Good
examples of this are the sound
of the brook from 1991 and Hidden
Worlds also from 1991, which might be
related to characteristic Icelandic
landscape.
During the second half of the 1990:ies Gunnar
Örns figures or spirits have left
natural surroundings as stones or moss
fromations. These figures or stones are
presently floating in air. Several examples
of this are on exhibition in the ArtNetGallery.
These spirits have different form - some
being floating in air in a lively
play of joy and other as sad misirable
faces - expressing human society or the
life of fairies, which might have its ups and
downs as the life of humans.
Saemundur Gudmundsson
