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Artist Details
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Haraldur Jonsson

www.this.is/comet
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Solo shows since 2000 (selection):
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2007 Crumpled Darkness, Ard Bia Gallery, Galway, Ireland
2005 Diagrams and a Model, 101 Gallery, Reykjavik
2005 Arctic Fruits, Material Time/Work Time/Life Time, Reykjavik Art
Festival. Curator Jessica Morgan
2005 The Story of Your Life, National Museum, Reykjavik
2005 Culs de Sac, The Corridor, Reykjavik
2004 Psychosomatic sculptures, BANANANAS, Reykjavik
2004 Surface Sense, Living Art Museum, Reykjavik
2003 Galaxies and Black Holes, Gallery I8, Reykjavik

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Group shows since 2000 (selection)
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2006 Crumpled Darkness, with Steingrimur Eyfjord, Ace Art, Winnipeg, Canada
2006 Sequences, CIA, Reykjavik
2006 EILAND, Grotta Lighthouse, Iceland
2006 In Order of Appearance, Living Art Museum, Reykjavik
2006 Homesick, Akureyri Art Museum, Iceland
2006 The Other Side of Things, BUS, Melbourne, Australia
2006 Kultur Buro, Barcelona, Spain
2006 Images of the North, Reykjavik Academy, Iceland
2005 Mythos und Melankolie, CAC, Cologne, Germany
2004 Gallery Kuckei-Kuckei, Berlin, Germany
2004 Ijs/Ice, Museum Dhont Dhaens, Deurle, Belgium
2004 Violence of Tone, W139, Amsterdam, Holland
2004 Videoabende, Galerie für Landschaftskunst, Hamburg, Germany
2003 HUS, Project, Dublin, Ireland
2003 5th Romanian Biennal, Iasi, Romania. Curator Anders Kreuger
2002 Different Times, Alaska Greenhouse, Reykjavik
2002 Projections, Warner Studios, Los Angeles, USA
2002 Self Esteem, ICA, Vilnius, Lithuania
2001 Remedy for Melancholy, Edsvik, Sweden
2000 The Coast, Reykjavk
2000 Under the Same Sky, KIASMA, Helsinki, Finland
2000 7/6, Eisernes Haus, Graz, Austria
2000 Hors la Carte, CRAC, Sete, France

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Collections
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Reykjavik Municipal Museum, Iceland
National Gallery, Iceland
Living Art Museum, Iceland
National Museum, Iceland
University of Iceland
Icelandair Art collection
Grendahuset, Rivedal, Norway
Private Collections in Iceland, Germany, Holland, England and USA

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The gap, the wound.
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There are those who view art as being separated from reality and artists as the true exiles. However, in the case of Haraldur Jónsson´s artwork, one could make the opposite observation, viewing art as reality, or as the medium that brings about the only possible reflections of reality. Far from in exile, the artist is here and now, his perception being of a moonlike quality, stimulating the ebb and flow of the countless reflections of reality, as if reality itself gravitates towards this human attribute. Thereby, one would not wish to disregard the human condition. Reality is hard to grasp, in particular the one that can only be perceived from within, or the reality of inner experiences. One is separated from oneself on pretty much every significant front, ranging from emotions to belief.

Language is known to express the desire for a different condition. It is in and by language where the war against separation is fought. On rare occasions, language succeeds, creating a dreamlike state of belonging where I know who I am, what I feel and how to live, as if at home within myself. More frequently, though, words shine through as injured attempts, creating the sturdy bridge within, forever separating ones perception from the reality of all the most desired things. Still, without the failed attempts of language, without the building of the bridge, the ocean of lost opportunities could not be perceived, moving constantly beneath its surface. What we have is language. It is true. But there is always more to the gap between perception and reality than language can account for.

Far from being in exile from the desired reality, the artist draws the map from above and beneath the bridge, acknowledging the interplay between language and perception, allowing, as it were, for the gap to express itself. ‘There are more things in heaven and earth than dreamt of in your philosophy’. Was it Haraldur who said this? He might have. Being both a poet and an artist, the enterprise of the empty yet vital language is carefully drawn by the unspeakable force of his perception. In his artwork, the gap expresses itself in different forms and colors, often as fragile, fleeting glimpses of reality that cannot but be carried away, again and again, in the constantly moving ocean of the beautifully doomed opportunities. A little boy reading aloud in an alphabetical order the names of emotions; a person projecting the vast darkness inside onto a piece of crumpled, black paper; a set of drawings, framed under transparent film, hanged on a wall in the form of a French window, allowing us to view the inner landscape of emotions and their immediate effect as a form of hypersensitivity.

‘Experience is not to be searched for in a dictionary. It falls out of the range of language.’ ‘The gap’, also in his own words, ‘is the wound’. If so, the bridge within that separates ones perception from all the desired things might thus be washed with blood.

Dr. Birna Bjarnadottir