Enigma
Sigurður Guðjónsson
Sigurður Guðjónsson is known for his magnificent video works where image, sound and space form an unbroken whole. He focuses particularly on the function of a variety of technical equipment, where the viewer is lured into a world of soothing repetition, rhythm and order, and the boundaries of the human and the mechanical become blurred.
The work Enigma is characterised by mesmerising repetitions in which a rhythm is struck like the heartbeat of the universe, creating order out of chaos. Using an electron microscope, carbon particles can be seen, and this minuscule material world can be made visible by millionfold magnification. There we see colossal dimensions, not unlike those seen through an astronomical telescope aimed out into the heavens. Vibration and rhythm in a non-linear narrative, grounded in the smallest possible scale, open our eyes to a world of dizzying dimensions.
Sigurður presented Iceland at the Venice Biennale 2022. He was awarded the Icelandic Art Prize for Visual Artist of the Year in 2018 for his dark and atmospheric exhibition Inlight, which featured video installations set throughout St. Joseph’s, a defunct hospital in Hafnarfjörður, Iceland.
Artist: Sigurður Guðjónsson