Tolli
Sjóndeildarhringur í óreiðu // A Horizon In Chaos
19 Aug - 10 Sep 2023
In his colourful paintings, Icelandic artist Tolli
(Þorlákur Morthens) has for four decades had
movement in every sense as a main subject
of his paintings, not least the ways movement
and transformation occurs in nature, in Earth’s
colourful hues but also in the colours of our own
inner nature and the subtle vibrations that occur
in the body, creating various frequencies of
colours and sound, which correspond with the
frequencies of our natural environment.
Tolli’s art is based in the expressive New Painting
of the early 1980s and is still partly influenced by
its rawness and fast abstract painting on large
canvases, in which the movement of the artist
during the creation plays a role in amplifying
the energy that eminates from the painting.
One thread in Tolli’s art is landscape, which
he paints based on his own experiencesof in-
spiration from hiking and dwelling in mountainous
environments in his home country. In the
exhibition, two sites in Iceland are the subject
of many of the works; the majestic mountain
Lómagnúpur and the wilderness at Fjallabak in
the highlands. Both sites attract hikers due to the
feeling of freedom of the vastness and stunning
colour and they have been a source of inspiration
for many other artists and poets in the past. At
the top of Lómagnúpur one can, on a good day,
have a view to Öræfajökull glacier and sometimes
over Vatnajökull glacier. And the immenseness
of Fjallabak fills the traveler’s lungs with crisp
mountain air. On a distant horizon, heaven and
earth meet.
Here we are in a sense invited on an inner journey.
We observe the steepness that our own path of
life is constructed for each of us to grapple with.
We visualize the steep peak as an ever-changing
shape and admire the colorful expansiveness
that the struggle brings, the chaos and re-
fractions that the eye perceives in different
ways depending on the angle of view. We are
reminded that the connections between sensory
impressions, such as the experience of smell,
sound, weather, colours and shapes, which the
senses perceive in untamed nature, are of an
aesthetic nature. They reflect our individual
experience, qualities such as attentiveness,
curiosity and imagination, which change and
become stronger the more mature we become.
The works in the exhibition are all new or very
recent. The landscape-based works share a
connection with the more abstract works in that
they radiate colours and energy from the large
brushstrokes and a flow of light. The chaos of the
natural experience transforms into an atmosphere
of formlessness, beyond words and specific
locations.
Tolli’s works can be characterised by a flow
of colour. They are sort of a colour-bath, a
powerful waterfall of colours that we are invited
to step under and into. This waterfall of colour is
immersive, it embraces us and in it our physical
being is infused by spiritual potency. Stepping
out of this waterfall, the colours continue to have
an effect, they are healing. Colours have had a
significant and ontological effect on the human
spirit throughout the ages and their effects, as
basically created through refractions of light
in nature, perceived through the retina, have
profound physiological effect on us. Harnessing
such refractions with paint on a movable, two-
dimensional surface indoors is an enchantment
of the ages. The perspective and the experience
continues to be our own.
The paintings eminate light. The clarity of the
colours and their contrasts play tricks on the eye.
We breathe in colours, and we exhale a flow of joy.
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