Interloper

 
The most grandiose living work of art
by Helga Þórsdóttir

Snorri’s creations and actions are created where he stands and rest in himself. Thus, his imagery is not fiction or a well fed ‘alter-ego’. The artist has not an iota of acting talent. For this reason, it is fair perhaps to maintain that Snorri is the most grandiose living work of art in Icelandic art history. In fact, Snorri can only be compared to the British artists Gilbert and George, who perform their own life as living sculptures, where the material is the British persona and the semiology surrounding that identity. What you see is Snorri Ásmundsson’s contribution to art, to the Icelandic nation and to the world. Æsa Sigurjónsdóttir stated that artists made great demands on themselves in the former part of the 20th century to lead the nation into the future. The artist was supposed to be a pioneer, a discoverer, and a visionary, a spiritual beacon, dismantling the old and obsolete and pointing to the new things on the horizon. It is fair to maintain that the values that Æsa lists are Snorri’s guiding lights in life and art. He has worked as a spiritual guide, a psychic yogi, a pioneer in time-based art, equally skilled as a singer and as a pianist, an artist who certainly strives to break down the old and the obsolete while persistently pointing our new ways and what is to come.
 
Curator Helga Þórsdóttir. Assistant curators Iðunn Jónsdóttir og Helga Arnbjörg Pálsdóttir.
 
Interloper will be on display until October 29th 2023.