CHART Art Fair 2025: Copenhagen, Denmark

For CHART Art Fair 2025, Þula’s presentation brings together artists who use material as a language of transformation, where layering, erasure, and reconfiguration shape new visual narratives. Guðmundur Thoroddsen’s oil and oil-stick compositions explore the tension between structure and spontaneity, while Helga Páley Friðþjófsdóttir’s process-driven paintings evolve through repetition and intuitive mark-making. Rakel McMahon challenges cultural constructs through material intervention, using re-interpretation and metaphor to explore shifting norms. Expanding beyond the booth, Kristín Morthens’ large-scale painting in the staircase engages with ideas of proximity and distance, mirroring the exhibition’s dialogue on presence and absence. This presentation highlights the expressive possibilities of material, inviting viewers to engage with the ways in which surfaces, textures, and forms hold meaning.

Guðmundur Thoroddsen (b. 1980)

Guðmundur Thoroddsen creates abstract paintings rooted in the Icelandic landscape, blending hand-crafted oil sticks with brushwork to form textured, textile-like surfaces. His work has been shown at Reykjavík Art Museum, Asya Geisberg Gallery, and across Europe and the US, and is held in major public and private collections. He was nominated for the Icelandic Art Prize in 2019 and lives in Reykjavík.

Helga Páley Friðþjófsdóttir (1987)

Helga Páley Friðþjófsdóttir is a Reykjavík-based painter whose work develops through layered processes of intuition, repetition, and reworking, allowing images to emerge over time. She has exhibited widely in Iceland and abroad, with recent solos at Akureyri Art Museum, Listval, and Þula, and group exhibitions at Reykjavík Art Museum, The Living Art Museum, and Alice Folker Gallery.

Kristín Morthens (b. 1992)

Kristín Morthens explores boundaries, intimacy, and separation through fragmented, limb-like figures set in abstract spaces. Working with oil, spray paint, and pastel, she layers surfaces to evoke touch, distance, and psychological thresholds. She has exhibited widely in Iceland and abroad, with recent shows at Reykjavík Art Museum and Þula, and her works are held in public and private collections.

Rakel McMahon (b. 1983)

Rakel McMahon works across media to explore gender, sexuality, stereotypes, and cultural norms, often through humor, metaphor, and re-interpretation. She has exhibited widely in Iceland and abroad, with recent solo shows at Þula and Listval, and group exhibitions at Reykjavík Art Museum and Reykjanes Art Museum. McMahon lives and works between Reykjavík and Athens.