SCINTILLA

The art of Bjargey Ólafsdóttir is not connected to a single medium
– she picks the medium she feels is most apt for each concept. Thus she may be likened to a versatile musician who has mastered many instruments, as Bjargey works in lm, sound art, performance art, drawing, painting and photography. In this case she has opted for photography, and the Reykjavík Museum of Photography is delighted to show the work of an artist based on this approach.

The exhibition Tíra/Scintilla is a collection of symbols which have come into being, either in the artist’s dreams, or have sprung into her consciousness between sleeping and waking. Bjargey takes the observer with her into a world where beauty and the spiritual reign; where such diverse subjects as the hand of God, mountains, a magic box, an elven baptismal font, scarves and drawings of high-heeled shoes play a role, bathed in a mystical light and gaudy colour. While Bjargey is here continuing to explore the territory of magical realism and surrealism, as in her prior work, she does not focus on the individual as such – she seeks to photograph sensa- tions which are expressed in these objects. Thus the exhibition is not bound together by a speci c narrative, but by a sort of ow, where one can forget time and place, and drift into timelessness or oblivion.

Scintilla propels the observer into a maelstrom under the sway of concepts such as trance, healing and transmigration of souls, in the territory of creation and inspiration. Bjargey puts forward this world of the invisible and spiritual as an antidote to the material- istic excesses of present-day lifestyles, pointing out to us that the boundaries of reality may be uid rather than a straight line. The objective is a noble one: she seeks to photograph the supernatural – even God himself. And is it possible to photograph Him? Or even permissible? In her art, Bjargey instinctively approaches the subject honestly and without preconceptions and – not least – imbues it with humour and playfulness. Whether God is in the magic box; whether he is a ray of light among the scarves in the foreground of a mountain landscape; whether, even, he is inside the high-heeled shoes, Scintilla reminds us to observe that the joys of life reside in the mind, but are ephemeral...

Jóhanna Guðrún Árnadóttir