Arngunnur Yr: Distant

Arngunnur Yr lives in California, but returns to lead hikes in the mountains of her native Iceland each summer. For several years she has painted atmospheric cloudscapes with mere hints at landmasses – more sea and sky and mood than actual place. Though dislocated, the paintings are clearly based on her experiences of Iceland.

In her newest paintings, she has shifted in format to exaggerated, practically panoramic horizontals. And while the vastness of the sky is still critical to her work, these paintings are firmly grounded in landscape.

Noteworthy about the paintings are their inherent dichotomies. The very idea of ‘contemporary’ paintings of landscape is oxymoronic. Although part of a long tradition of landscape, these paintings feel fresh and surprising. They are extremely beautifully painted – pastoral and lush – but with passages in which the artist has scraped and gouged the panels to reveal shockingly-hued undercoats. There is a feeling of rawness, even violence, that is energetic and exciting, as though we are standing on the edge of the world, bearing witness to the thrill and terror of nature’s most primordial forces of destruction and renewal.