Anna Joelsdottir

Anna Joelsdottir
"Priest Chews velvet haddock"
A painting installation
@ the Stux Gallery

From what I read this is her second solo exhibition of installations, paintings and drawings, and I would have loved to see the fist one. Her new body of work, medium wise, is all over the place. She moves from using canvases as her main surface, to using other very interesting materials. She uses what seems to be large plastic strips painted over, or objects such as sticks and big three-dimensional installations,. In each medium however, the viewer can see how Anna always traces back to painting. This series seems, to me, to be very freeing and expressive, it lets the artist tear down or build up different colorful forms. At the same time, her meticulously painted sticks show her passion for paint and her love for organic and flexible movement on the very hard edges of the sticks. She always goes back to abstracted figures in all of her paintings no matter what the surface material is. The way the installations and paintings are placed is very successful, there is always something peaking around the corner that you can't wait to see. Each body of work relate to one another, no matter what material she used, the colors seem to be same, lots of yellow, reds and greens in a muddy field of curving black lines. She explains her relationship to space: “I am learning as I go… It is both thrilling and scary -- … I approach this problem as a painter, I try to see the space as a painting, try to imagine things in a space like they would fit into a painting.”. I find the tittle of the exhibition be very surrealist, “priest chews velvet haddock,” what does it mean?. Like many artist she is trying to let the viewer fill in the empty spaces. She leaves the viewers make their own meaning out of this exhibition. I find my meaning to be "genius". I really really, like her paintings. The burst of colors in the white canvas is just so eye catching. I have to say, this one of the best exhibitions I've ever been to.