Suspended

As a co-founder of the artists’ group and gallery SÚM (1965) in Reykjavík, which functioned as a community and art space supporting Icelandic contemporary art on both the local and the international scenes, Hreinn Friðfinnsson has been an acclaimed figure among the pioneers of Icelandic avant-garde. Problematising our reliance on visual reality, the artist experiments with three-dimensional media and subtly intervenes with common objects, or introduces minimal changes to everyday items. Friðfinnsson creates works in relation to ways of seeing, perception of space, and the notion of time. His practice is exploratory and experience based, without being linked to any particular narrative or information.
Presenting the artist’s ideas about form, composition, geometry, repetition, and reflection, Friðfinnsson’s work entitled "Suspended" is a sculpture consisting of a series of sticks that have been used by professional painters for stirring paint and mixing colours. The painted sticks are random in nature, as they were formed in various artists’ studios for a simple, practical reason, and came into being through a mixture of choice and chance, after which they were collected by Friðfinnsson. Each one painted with a slightly different colour combination, the sticks are pinned to a wall with painted tips facing downward, in alternating rows and an order to be decided by the one who exhibits or owns the work. Their functional purpose of mixing paint has been transformed into a visual form, an object to be looked at. Viewed from afar, the work creates an illusion of sticks suspended in the air.