Studio Visit: Örn Alexander Ámundason

Born in 1984, Ámundason completed his studies at the Malmö Art Academy
in 2011. He is still based in Sweden, where he plans on staying for the time
being. Interesting projects and exhibitions have come up for the young artist
in the recent past, including the Gothenburg Biennial, Sequences, the Armory
Show and Lunds Konsthall. It seems that 2013 will continue to bring exciting
opportunities.

The recent
performance in Copenhagen, entitled Chews, is an example
of Ámundason´s interest in the creative process behind art. He highlights the
ambiguous connections between idea and outcome, intention and accident,
inspiration and creativity. The slightly pathetic biscuit-sculptures resulting
from the tactical event suggested an artist´s alienation from his creation,
which seems to take on a life of its own in a complicated creative process.
Previously, Ámundason has sculpted clay during random phone conversations (Samtöl, 2011) and worked on his sculptures while two
opera singers perform around him in the studio (Styrofoam, Burlap and Plaster,
2011). As in Chews, the resulting objects offer
little to the viewer about the circumstances under which they came about and
the work relies on the performance or the video documentation.

In Collaboration Monument (2012)
the title gives away certain inconsistencies at stake. When two or more artists
work together they tend to strive for an open-ended process with no fixed conclusion.
Here, Ámundason and artist Olof Nimar invited a political
figure and an architect to work with them on a public sculpture that would stand
as a testament to cooperation. Taking place in the Netherlands, a local member of
the House of Representatives acted as a ‘surrogate’, while the two artists gave
him separate instructions through headphones, guiding him as he sketched the monument
on paper with a pencil. They later handed the drawing over to the architect, who
interpreted it into a three-dimensional sculpture that was then constructed on a
peninsula outside of DordtYart, Dordrecht.

Ámundason and Nimar are currently
in the process of repeating the project, now alongside the Gothenburg-based rock
band, SonSon. The eventual monument will serve as set design
for their upcoming tour through Germany. The project will finally be presented in
an exhibition in Mors Mössa, Gothenburg.
Ámundason sees this project becoming an ongoing part of his practice that he and
Nimar can revisit from time to time in different scenarios. One project that they
are particularly excited about involves them on a sunny beach instructing a surrogate
via Skype, initiating the creative chain reaction but not necessarily seeing the
completed monument.

The artist
is fascinated by the element of interpretation inherent in the project, where
language becomes drawing, which then becomes sculpture. He is excited to see
what will happen when SonSon´s music becomes part of the game. Ámundason has
worked with music before, in his work from 2009, Kreppa: A Symphonic Poem About the Financial Situation in
Iceland. He transcribed into musical notes words and speeches
from local politicians, investors, protesters, banks and the media, who were
all involved with the financial crisis. The outcome was a public orchestral
performance of rhythmic, if somewhat cacophonous, music.

Collaborative- and process-based
practice, which for some reason has progressed by taking itself ever more seriously,
implementing detached chain reactions and faceless collaborations, becomes engaging
in the attitude of this interesting artist. Ámundason’s works do not seem to be
overly strategic, clever or impersonal. Far from it, they are poetic, even romantic,
somewhat clumsy and plain silly at times. Coming up in 2013 is the Mors Mössa project,
in March, and an exhibition in the Sogn og Fjordane Kunstmuseum in Norway, in June.