Baldur Helgason: Málararnir / The Painters
Current exhibition
Overview
Being a painter is a job like any other, except perhaps with a little more turpentine and uncertainty. The painter works, waits, dreams and doubts. The days blend into one another in a cycle of repetition, where creativity is both a freedom and an obligation. Invisible struggles and small rituals become part of everyday life, driven by the need to create.These struggles can become paralysing when it comes to something that should be as simple as squeezing a little paint out of a tube, mixing it with a splash of turpentine and linseed oil, and getting started. In The Painters, I turns my attention to the everyday life of the artist: the tools, the routines, and the state of mind that comes with the act of creating.- Baldur Helgason
Baldur Helgason +1 - Words by Sjón
Among the countless works of art depicting great events in world history, whether those taking place in the human world or in higher realms (or in both places at once, as in the end of time), and wherever these works may come to us from, east, west, north, or south, there is, as the occasion surely demands, often a vast gathering of players. Sometimes we see all of humanity assembled in one place, along with every angel and demon known at that point in history. Usually, everyone is fighting with every weapon at their disposal, with the afterlife of the human soul itself hanging in the balance.
Except that once the named great figures and gods have been set aside, along with their heavenly and earthly advisers, such as the Holy Spirit and Rasputin, archangels and high-ranking officials at the court of Hell, saints and temple goddesses, high priests and military commanders, philosophers and women of science, princes and poets, and once doctors and nursing mothers, bank and bookshop employees, tradesmen and kitchen maids, shoemakers and parking attendants, musicians and seamstresses, butchers and drunken teenagers have also been put to one side (to mention just a few examples), it sometimes happens that only one person remains.
What distinguishes this person from all the others present is that they stand at the very edge of the picture. The foot nearest to us seems to bridge the boundary between the artwork and the world beyond it. Unlike everyone else, they turn their face away from the world-historical events so brilliantly laid out before our eyes; painted, carved, rendered, woven, collaged, sculpted. Yet, like the others in the picture, we recognize this solitary figure by the symbols that accompany them — one gets a lightning bolt, another a whipped- cream mixer, as these things go — and this figure is none other than the artist themselves.
In their shadow there stands one other being. This is the studio slave, usually referred to as +1. Small in stature and bald, like the soft underside of a little toe (that much despised part of the body which occasionally makes its presence felt through a blister or an ingrown toenail), he struggles to keep his balance on the picture plane. His arms are full of the tools of art. Oh dear, down he falls. Humans, gods, and demons all laugh.
Baldur Helgason’s artworks depict the human body in a punchy, expressionistic visual style — uniting humor, nostalgia, and mania. Adopting a classic European cartoon aesthetic, Helgason’s art often depicts and subverts the human form, exploring themes of identity, spirituality, and the human condition. Through his unique visual language, Baldur Helgason captures the essence of what it means to be alive in the modern world. His artworks are an explosive mixture of nostalgia, humor, and mania, revealing a deep understanding of the complexity and contradictions that define human nature.
Baldur Helgason (b. 1984) received his BFA from Iceland Academy of the Arts in 2008 and MFA from the Academy of Art University in San Francisco in 2011. He has exhibited widely in international exhibitions including solos at Ojiri Gallery, London, UK; WOAW Gallery, Hong Kong; and Richard Heller Gallery, California, USA as well as group shows at Reykjavik Art Museum, Reykjavik, Iceland; König Gallery, Berlin, Germany; and Galerie Zink, Waldkirchen, Germany. His works are held in numerous private and public collections. Baldur lives and works in Reykjavik, Iceland