Survey
* Your assessment is very important for improving the workof artificial intelligence, which forms the content of this project
* Your assessment is very important for improving the workof artificial intelligence, which forms the content of this project
During the summer of 2001, Harpa Árnadóttir exhibited the work “Teikning” or “Drawing” at the exhibition “Drawing Iceland” in Gallery 54 in Gothenburg. “Drawing Iceland” was an exhibition of minimalist drawings by Icelandic artists. Besides Harpa, Ingólfur Arnarson, Kristján Guðmundsson Sigurður Guðmundsson, Hreinn Finnsson, Finnbogi Pétursson, Ragna Róbertsdóttir and Ingileif Thorlacius were all represented. The work “Teikning” was an eraser that had been placed upon a white, 120 cm high pillar. The eraser was large, (5,7 x 3 and 6 x 1,7 cm), linnen white, and in a soap bar like shape, most similar to Lux soap. On the edges the eraser had black marks that showed it had obviously been used in the way it was meant to be. What meening does a used eraser have in connection to a drawing exhibition? Perhaps, this eraser was the heart of the exhibition, the materializing of drawing Iceland – an island full of drawings, of which each line is filled with promises. The beginning and finalization of all, or the black hole (though white) that pulls everything towards it. A clump, full of images that haven't yet been drawn or ideas that have yet to be expressed. Perhaps it is what lies in the unconsciousness that we don't wish to bring into the open, our hidden existence. There are so many drawings, we are never allowed to see. It is interesting to imagine what has been censored, disappeared, and why. The eraser has the shape of a bar of soap. One uses soap to wash away – things like unwelcome smudges. “Teikning” is a minimalist and conceptual work with roots in Duchamp, but the expression readymade comes from him. From the year 1914 Duchamp created many readymades, that are works put together from objects that already had some specific uses. These readymade pieces revolve around themselves. The onlooker completes the work according to his own experience. Harpa´s eraser is that kind of readymade, ready to use, placed on a pedestal – but here it is not the object in itsef that is important, rather what this object is used for. It is really an erased drawing on the pedestal; a drawing we aren't allowed to see. What kind of a drawing is hidden in the eraser? To erase something is like the gesture of stopping someone in their steps. Perhaps he was drawing the forbidden; the face of God. Is there something holy hidden within the eraser? How can it disappear without trace? The core must still be there. Edmund Burkes descriptions in his Philosophical Enquiry into the Sublime and the Beautiful on how one can get a greater effect through minimalism come to mind when Harpa´s work is examined: ... “a comparatively small quantity of matter to produce a grander effect than a much larger quantity disposed in another manner” The eraser on its pedestal – a statue, a still life, to meditate and stop the flow of time. To call an eraser a drawing is in itself a performance – a witness to what was done. What is stored within the eraser is more than anything else the artists own presence – her fingerprints. Perhaps Harpa is encouraging us to grab the eraser as we view the exhibition. In 1958, Yves Klein exhibited an empty room at the Gallery Clert in Paris. The work was called “Emptiness”. The completely empty room was nothing more than an idea. The curious audience had been fooled. Just like Ives Klein, Harpa teases her audience. An empty room and an erased or unfinished drawing will not let us be. We want to experience and enjoy, but the piece of chocolate, the esthetic experience, is taken away from us. Instead we get a caramel that stretches the imagination in every direction. Besides “Teikning” Harpa exhibited pencil drawings that looked like almost invisible pencil prints on paper. These were unclear drawings that implied something – held something – leftovers. They had obviously been erased with fingertips and hands – she had used her body as if it were a giant eraser. The pictures are abstract like a whisper or a breath, but could as well be a landscape shrouded in mystery, fog. Harpa´s drawings change and gain a new meaning when exhibited next to “Teikning”. They no more seem self sufficient in the spirit of l´ art pour l´art, but become a symbol, an indication or leftovers of something that used to be, but no longer is, something lost, erased. They aren´t abstract anymore, quite the opposite, at least the eraser shows them in a new light. With the work “Teikning” Harpa manifests herself as an idea artist with greater emphasize on meaning than form. She becomes an artist of intellectual reasoning. The form still remains important in her work, which is both esthetic and theoretical. Actually, one can use both terms equally in describing her art. Finally, the eraser symbolizes artist of all time. It brings all together, the works of the hands, eyes and mind. At first glance, the object upon the high pillar by the window appears to be a bar of soap, but with closer examination one can see it is a big eraser. The title of the work is “Teikning” or “Drawing”. Harpa Árnadóttir is the artist. What is turned around here? Are we talking about philosophy? We must at least take a look . It is always good to look into philosophy. Still, this object is the portrayal of beautiful simplicity and it doesn't at all look as if it wants to be anything else. The eraser looks like a bar of soap. The resemblance becomes clearer when the usage is taken into account. To wash away dirt. To wash clean. To erase, or turn into nothing. Yet, the artist did not in the beginning consider the likeness to a bar of soap. When I met her a year later, she shows me the drawing of the object on the pillar. Not the same object, just one of the erasers she uses. Of course there is a connection between the drawing and the eraser. If the latter is used sparingly, the black led from the drawing will stick to the eraser and become a drawing in itself, as in this instance. A completely different drawing, to be sure. And why not exhibit this drawing? One could also look upon erasing as drawing in reverse; to make, to turn into nothing or to make it look like noting happened at all. Signs of destruction are left behind, but then you can also reverse this, as Harpa did in an old monastery when she participated in an exhibition in Denmark. She told me she had erased a square from the old walls thereby removing ancient soil. The removal is the sign of what was left. The soiled walls all around became a drawing. She still has no pictures of this to show me, so that square meter must simply somehow portray itself in my own mind. Perhaps “Teikning” is exactly such a work. This was not the eraser she used to clean the walls of the monastery even though one could easily imagine so. The soap bar shaped eraser on the high pillar is not very blackened. It obviously has not been used very much. Then it would also have shrunk. it appear more to have gotten a little gray with touching, rather than by erasing. Since this I have seen more of Harpa´s drawings. Diary drawings done in hard pencil. Abstract, or simply with the intention of creating. At times, almost invisible, or even totally invisible where I must simply envision them. As she herself puts it: “It is more important to feel it than to see it.” Still, I experience her art as straight forward and without affectation. Thinking brings out the feeling. The outdoor piece that was called Now it is and never more was created by the amplified ticking of an invisible clock. Exalted? Probably another drawing, the sign of time. Each tick one dot. A white exhibit, with a tiny black on the edges upon a soap bar shaped eraser called Drawing, is really a passionate work. Beneath the clear surface, strong opposites bubble. Here, in the mind, all kinds of complicated connections are born. Signs and destruction, things done, undone, and disappearing, how all deteriorates with time. This exhibits decomposition just like a scull or a burning candle; That is also a contradiction where the piece of wax solidifies though the flame grows; or what, where have we now arrived, what are we trying to say or do? This makes us surprised, and for the moment, that is enough. The work is humorous as well as magnificent. Something that makes life worth living and the art worth striving for. (May I place an question-mark here?) Perhaps it is best to keep thoughts to oneself, not to exclaim out loud, even though the person holding on to the pen enjoys philosophizing about which comes first the hen or the egg. At that point it is good to turn back to what is being discussed; what is physically there, the thing itself. The person writing can also always press “delete”, or the same button on my old typewriter “Erase” Mikael Olofsson Published in the newspaper Göteborgsposten, Gothenburg 2003