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15/6/2006

Katrin Sigurdardottir

Frac Bourgogne, Dijon

The work of the Icelandic artist Katrin Sigurdardottir (born in 1967 in Reykjavik) invites us to experience spaces - between architecture and landscape - that draw on our own frames of reference as observers and our memories of the natural sites we have travelled through. The works, which seem like rough sketches in three dimensions, affirm by the simplicity of their construction the character, at once personal and cultural, of these sites. Indeed, Katrin Sigurdardottir is interested in everything that denotes the perception of place. For the Frac Bourgogne, she has devised two new spaces, which transform the spectator’s usual place in - and experience of - the exhibition space.

Visitors to the FRAC site in Dijon may have already discovered Katrin Sigurdardottir’s Island (2003), a piece that was acquired for the Frac Bourgogne collection last year and was shown in the exhibition The Genius of the Place 1. The piece unites many elements of the artist’s approach; while there is an explicit reference to landscape, the architecture of the exhibition space is also clearly evoked. This island, with its cut-out edges, is closed in on itself; it has no openings, but is lit up from the inside; as a result, this small territory seems to be both a protected place and a world cut off from the outside. Today the idea of Iceland as a place of spectacular landscapes, innumerable islands and vast deserted spaces has become a cliche'; this, however, is not the side of her native land that interests Katrin Sigurdardottir, who left Iceland for the United States in 1988, as a student. The elements that she devises are made mainly from wood, and assert their status as constructions by the rather rough way they are made. They evoke the landscapes of Iceland in only the most allusive manner, as a distant or imaginary memory. While nature is central to her work, the artist approaches it less for its specificity than for the relation that we have with it today. Landscape in modern art is the exact counterpart of urban space, an often nostalgic representation of a lost world, a place to safeguard from the ravages of development, a haven of peace that the city-dweller descends on at weekends or during holidays. Katrin Sigurdardottir’s work is about our perception of landscape in the age of globalisation.

Katrin Sigurdardottir’s very simple forms are at once deliberately slight sculptures, whose function it is to define the specificities of the site, and miniature representations of landscape. In this sense, as a spectator, we are at the very heart of the work, we activate it. Our experience of it rests on a double dimension: on the one hand, we experience the physical perception of our own relation to the work and its space, on the other, we perceive the images generated by the work - a more cerebral experience. The artist has said: “I like to contrast the purely visual and cerebral perceptions of the work with the actual physical encounter of an object." (Marc Spiegler, “Kathri'n Sigurdardo'ttir", in ARTnews, nov. 2005, p. 200).
The miniature is the means by which the artist generates these mental images. The change of scale modifies our relationship with the site and prioritizes the act of looking. For this exhibition Katrin Sigurdardottir has conceived a large space in which this double dimension of perception is essential. A clever interlocking system shifts us ceaselessly from the perception of our own physical presence to that of an imaginary space. This untitled piece also reverses the usual place of the spectator, who is himself inside the sculpture and can only fully see it through a system of miseen- abyme. The result is a fragmentation of perception, which is equally central to the other piece on show, also untitled, in which a photograph of a canyon in the American West is fragmented, spreading over separate scenographic panels that partially obstruct the entrance to the exhibition space. These two landscapes are mythical: one is a vision of inalterable, immaculate purity; the other, the symbol of an idyllic territory offered to all possible occupations. The spectator, however, is confronted from the start with the reverse side of the de'cor, and is thus prevented from losing himself in contemplative illusions. In addition, the artist has conceived a circuit, leading from one piece of work to the other, that does away with any possibility of believing in the trompe l’oeil. The work is indeed a construction and nothing more; we are not being asked to comprehend, through its depiction, a specific site that exists elsewhere, but this very place, here and now, in all its artificiality, at the intersection of personal and cultural frames of reference. The artist sees perception as something ever-changing and nomadic. This is why some of her pieces are made like suitcases - miniature transportable landscapes that make it possible for the spectator, whatever the time or place, to mentally wander through them. The cartography always present in Katrin Sigurdardottir’s work is less important here than the question of place, and the perception of its many facets in space and time, because the most important thing for her is this displacement: “My work testifies to a nomadic predicament: the centre of one’s existence as the transit itself rather than a location arrived at or departed from." (Eva Heisler, “Of Landmarks and Birthmarks: the work of Katrin Sigurdardottir", n.paradoxa, vol.15, London, 2005, p.80.)

Accordingly, the artist has created a place of experimentation for the spectator, whose perception of the present moment, like hers, is coloured by memories and narratives; the mythical landscapes that she has chosen for this exhibition reveal their fictional side all the more.

Claire Legrand, manager of the visitors' department Translated by Josephine Marchand

A guided tour will be given on Saturday 8 June at 3 pm at the Frac and les 16, 17 septembre for Heritage days - free entry

Jus de fruits concert #2 - Catherine Brisset, cristal baschet Sunday 25 June at 11 am at the Frac - free entry

Jus de fruits concert #3 - Pascal Contet, accordeon Sunday 8 October at 11 am at the Frac - free entry

Monographic catalogue forthcomming title

This exhibition was produced with the support of the Ministry of Culture and Communication (DRAC: Regional Direction of Cultural Affairs of Burgundy), the Regional Council of Burgundy and the General Council of Cote d’Or.

Opening on Friday 16 June from 6 pm

fonds regional d'art contemporain de Bourgogne
49 rue de Longvic F - 21000 Dijon
open from Monday to Saturday from 2-6 pm, except on public holidays

stampa

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