Mist. Like white smoke it hovers over a pallid, bleak scene - a stone, rubble, something's moving; moaning music like spherical tones from a long gone memory that suddenly strikes the heartbeat only to just as suddenly drown back into the unseizable's dusk. Sigurdur Gudjónsson's films breathe an oppressive silence, sough despair, pant fear. The tangled fragments of a dreamlike tale about desolation, self-inflicted failure, longing and denial, have convened to form a mystical requiem of shades...

Over and over, refusing a linear narrative, he blends together palpable elements and grotesque images in a symphony of unsettled emotions, binds them into unity with crackling, rustling sounds and the sonorous tune of a distant trumpet ("Host", 2004).

In his latest work, "Death bed" (2005/06), the run-down sceleton of an old house stands in the middle of a bewildering cluster of morbid and grotesque conditions and the attempt of a hooded protagonist to intrude the ruin in the endless snowcovered wasteland. In the eerie atmosphere, he meets - or does he? - figures, faceless people who in what might or might not seem scenes of the past dress their grey, jejune hair in pin curlers and wash their decaying limbs in red water to the sound of a muted piano's play.

Cinematic and musical elements are of equal importance in Sigurdur Gudjónsson's atmospheric works, to him, sound, vision and cut are equitable compositorial means on his search for a not so much intellectual but physically and emotionally perceptible abyss that Freud called the "Un-homely". His works' mystic, quasi-spiritual mood reflects psychological states on a universal level that, elder than speech itself, uncaptured in words and rationally unfathomable, introduces the mind to its borderline with emotion.

Katharina Klara Jung, March 2006



CURRICULUM VITAE

2000-2003 Iceland Academy of the Arts, BA.
2000-2003 Akademie der Bildenden Künste, Wien, Austria 1998-1999 Billedskolen, Copenhagen, Denmark

Solo Exhibitions

2006 Dark places, Motorenhalle, Dresden, Germany
Bleak - Trostlos, Kunstverein Langenhagen, Langenhagen, Germany
Deathbed, Galerie Adler, Frankfurt am Main, Germany 2004 Host, Gallery Kling & Bang, Reykjavik, Iceland 2002 Darkness, Gallery Priestor, Bratislava (mit Magnus Arnason), Slovakia
Cat, Gallery Kukur, Iceland
Wonderboy, Gallery Nema Hvad, Iceland
Saebjörnsson and Sara Riel, Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin, Germany (cat)

Group Exhibitions

2007 100 Tage 100 Videos, GL Strand, Copenhagen, Denmark
2006 Vienna Biennale, Vienna, Austria
100 Tage 100 Videos, Heidelberger Kunstverein, Heidelberg, Germany
SEQUENCES real time festival, Reykjavík, Iceland
Temporary Cities, National Centre for Contemporary arts NCCA, Moscow, Russia
The Un-Homely, Galerie Adler, New York City, USA
Contemporary Video Art from Iceland, KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin, Germany
Iceland Show, BUS Gallery, Melbourne, Australia
the end, my friend, Spielhaus Morrison Galerie, Berlin, Germany
Islandia, Kültur Büro Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain
2005 Host, Berlin Liste, Klink&Bank invasion, Germany
2004 Etoiles Polares, Vooruit, Ghent, Belgium
Nyskopun - Ny - Skopun,exhibition in a collaboration with Ice Tec, Reykjavík, Iceland
Berlin North (in collaboration with Elin Hansdottir, Ásdis Sif Gunnarsdottir, Egil
Saebjörnsson and Sara Riel), Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin, Germany (cat) 2003 Behind the eyes, Bergen Kunsthalle, Norway
Stye, Reykjavik Art Museum, Iceland
Grasrót, The Living Art Museum, Reykjavík, Iceland
Uppnam, Einar Jonsson Sculpture Garden, Iceland
Stye, Gallery 10, Húsavik, Iceland
2002 IXI Soundperformance, Museums Quartier 21, Vienna, Austria
Red, Uppsala Short Film Festival, Sweden
Converter Projekt Part 2, The Living Art Museum, Iceland
2001 LOD, sound Performance in Buryzone, Bratislava, Slovakia
Converter Projekt Part 1, Semper Depot, Vienna, Austria
Polyfonia, Living Art Museum, Iceland
Daddy goes all the way, Safnahusid, Husavik, Iceland
Eagle Beagle, Living Art Museum, Iceland (in collaboration with Egill Saebjornsson)
Honk, Living Art Museum, Iceland
Best Hlemmur in the World, The electro company sound performance
2000 Dælan gengur, Olis, Iceland
Polyfonia, Living Art Museum, Iceland
Electro Company, The Yellow House, Iceland (sound performance)

Collections

Reydan Weiss, Essen, Germany
Private collections.

Selected video works

2006 Bleak, 25min, hdv/dvd
2006 Sárabeð/Deathbed, 25 min, hdv/dvd 2004 Host, length 42 min, dvcam/dvd
2004 Flesh, length 15 min, dv cam/dvd
2003 Stye, length 37 min dv cam/dvd
2002 Darkness, length 16 min, dv cam/dvd
2001 Leatherstreet, length 35 min, dv cam/dvd and audio cd
In collaboration with Gabriela Friðriksdóttir: 2005 West / Tetrologi, length 9min

Music

2002 Killed a man with his ass
The Beautiful Carrot
Slím, in collaboration with Magnus Arnason
2001 Leatherstreet, in collaboration with Arnar Gudjonsson
Loð, in collaboration with Magnus Arnason
1993 Abduction, Cranium

Bibliography

2006 Sigurdur Gudjonsson: Dark Places, LIST Icelandic Art News no. 9, by Dr. Christian Schön
Reykjavik, Art Review, by November Paynter, June 2006, p. 54
Licht, Ton, Schnitt, Zeichnung, Illusion, Ritual - durchbuchstabiert, Main Echo, by Gundel-Maria Busse, May 3rd, 2006
Island in Videos und Fotos, Frankfurter Neue Presse, by Gernot Gottwals, May 2nd, 2006, p. 27
2004 Berlin North, catalog Hamburger Bahnhof

Katharina Klara Jung