The work of Ingunn Fjóla Ingþórsdóttir evolves around the manifestation of systems, their influence and how individuals produce and utilize them for their own benefit. The exhibition PALEBRIGHT BEAMDEEP is a colorful conversation between her woven paintings which are positioned systematically with the desired effect to trigger the viewer's senses. The inherent duality of her work, the material and the essence, and the system and the sensory, form the main configurations within her artistic research, as she gestures towards the paradoxical, push pull, hues of human existence.
Colors have an element of magnetism, their effect and our understanding of them is equally individualistic, cultural and undoubtedly value laden. Where we sat across from each other in her studio, she told me how she selects and detects the colors and combinations. The correct selection induces a physical reaction in her, her mouth starts watering and she feels butterflies in her stomach.
Each art piece is developed at a slow pace, as Ingunn paints the warp and sometimes the weft as she weaves, giving her full control of the color combination and texture. The selection of the thread, the inner and outer surface of the frame, form the components of the art piece and are to be viewed interchangeably from afar and up close. The flow between material and essence, the system and the sensory, becomes rather effortless in this regard. Simply because the artwork invites the viewer to equally focus their attention on the artist's characteristic colors and auras as well as the gridded and strict weave within the systematic installment.
In our conversations Ingunn had mentioned the urge to provoke a sense of visual tension within the viewer. Therefore the viewer is encouraged to engage with the artwork from different viewpoints, as a whole, up close, from afar, all whilst taking notice if any of the colors call for more attention and perhaps even cause a reaction.
Karina Hanney Marrero, art theorist
