• Sigurdur-Gudmundsson-Mountain-1980-82.


Sigurður Guðmundsson 1980-1982

Sigurður Guðmundsson's Mountain can be called a living sculpture, captured in a photograph. The artist himself is central in the piece and is placed as a point of intersection between nature and culture. The layering of vertical and horizontal lines depicts a certain process from a natural foundation to the man who has created his cultural products: rocks, turf, man, shoes, bread and books. The composition is reminiscent of the construction of a turf farm. With stone and turf walls, people's houses became a part of the landscape and people's daily lives were similarly interwoven with the land. The sculpture itself, Mountain, is both figurative and non-figurative in this piece. As a form it rests on the intersection of nature, man and culture and it also exists as an idea, expressed through the text that reveals the title. The man is at once a reason and basis for the mountain to exist as an idea and as a form. It is the man's creation and without him, the mountain would not exist. Just like art itself.

Mountain was Sigurður Guðmundsson's last piece in a series of photographs called Situations that he did from 1971-1982. The photographs are planned performance art or living sculptures, both black and white and in colour, where the artist himself usually plays the main part. Artists associated with Fluxus and concept art in the 1960s and 70s often used photography to capture performance art or other artistic endeavours. Sigurður performed his scenes almost entirely in the Netherlands but his photographs are intended to represent the final and actual piece of art.


LÍ 8101

The National Gallery of Iceland