55. Biennale di Venezia – Padiglione islandese

Katrín Sigurdardóttir rappresenta l’Islanda alla Biennale di Venezia col progetto Foundation for the Lavanderia—The Old Laundry.

Comunicato stampa

For the Pavilion of Iceland at the 55th International Art Exhibition – la Biennale di Venezia in 2013, Katrín Sigurdardóttir has created a large-scale sculptural intervention titled Foundation for the Lavanderia—The Old Laundry at Palazzo Zenobio. The artist has created a floating platform covered by ornate, baroque-inspired tiles, measuring approximately 90 square meters. The outline of the architectural structure takes its form from the footprint of a typical 18th-century pavilion, intersecting both interior and exterior spaces of this auxiliary building.

The project is born from the artist's career-long exploration of distance and memory, and their embodiments in architecture, urbanism, cartography, and landscape. After la Biennale di Venezia, the piece will travel to the Reykjavík Art Museum and then to the SculptureCenter in Long Island City, New York.

Upon entering the work, visitors will first climb the stairs leading from the garden to the platform, bending down to pass through the truncated doors of the building. Visitors can also climb a second set of stairs to the roof of the building and look down on the sculpture's large footprint and intricate patterns.

The size of this architectural piece dwarfs the building and addresses a familiar theme in Sigurdardóttir's oeuvre, the playful manipulation of scale. Notably, Iceland lacks its own pavilion in the Giardini, and therefore the floating, disembodied structure of Sigurdardóttir's sculpture serves as a metaphor for the outline of the national space.

The surface of the platform replicates artisanal tile construction and is handmade by the artist and her team. Sigurdardóttir chose to use art materials instead of traditional flooring materials to emphasize the understanding of the surface as a sculpture that the viewer wears down with every step.

Sigurdardóttir has worked with two curators in realizing the exhibition, Mary Ceruti and Ilaria Bonacossa. Ceruti is Executive Director and Chief Curator at SculptureCenter. Ilaria Bonacossa is the Director of Museo D'Arte Contemporanea Villa Croce in Genova, Italy.

Catalogue:
A fully illustrated catalogue accompanies the exhibition, published by Marsilio Editori, in collaboration with the ReykjavÍk Art Museum. It is 128 pages, in English with text inlay in Icelandic, and includes essays by Eva Heisler and Kristín Ómarsdottir, and short texts by: Hafthór Yngvason (Director, Reykjavík Art Museum and catalogue editor), Dorothée Kirch (Director, Icelandic Art Center), Katrín Jakobsdóttir (Minister of Culture and Education of Iceland), Ilaria Bonacossa and Mary Ceruti (co-curators). Also included is an interview with artist Katrín Sigurdardóttir and the co-curators.

About Katrín Sigurdardóttir
Katrín Sigurdardóttir was born in Reykjavík in 1967 and has lived and worked between Iceland and the United States for 25 years. Her works have been shown extensively in Europe and the Americas, and are included in numerous public and private collections. She had solo exhibitions at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (2010); MoMA PS1, New York (2006); FRAC Bourgogne, Dijon, France (2006); Sala Siqueiros, Mexico City (2005); Fondazione Sandretto, Turin, Italy (2004); and The Reykjavík Museum of Art (2004, 2000). Her most recent gallery shows were at Eleven Rivington, New York, and Meessen De Clercq, Brussels, in 2012.

About the Pavilion of Iceland
The Icelandic Art Center oversees the Pavilion of Iceland at la Biennale di Venezia in collaboration with the Reykjavík Art Museum. A panel of experts selected the representative of Iceland at the 55th International Art Exhibition – la Biennale di Venezia. The panel included Dorothée Kirch, Director of the Icelandic Art Center, Ólöf Kristín Sigurdardóttir, Director of Hafnarborg The Hafnarfjordur Centre of Culture and Fine Art, and Hildur Bjarnadóttir, artist. Visiting members in the committee were Ragnar Kjartansson, artist, and Ólafur Gíslason, art historian.