Hrafnkell Sigurdsson’s Vivid Tents

I first encountered Hrafnkell Sigurdsson’s photographs in Reykjavik a year and a half ago, at the suggestion, I might add, of Pétur Arason, who in his typically concise, quizzical, raised-eyebrows way wondered, well, whether there might really be something there. He was right, there was, and I recall being transfixed by Sigurdsson’s head-on, large-scale photographs of snowy mountains or seemingly remote geologic formations which turned out to be nothing more than “mountains” of snow on streets in the small town of Selfoss, heaped into big piles by snowplows after a storm. These photographs yield a wonderful confusion between landscape and villagescape, natural and man-made environment, and there is also something refreshingly topsy-turvy about them in Icelandic terms: not photographs of Hekla, Thingvellir, or any other renowned site but of ignoble snow piles on Raudholt Street, in the center of Selfoss, or just off the main road Austurvegur. Nothing could be more anti-romantic, but still Sigurdsson’s photographs are undeniably gorgeous and seductive, and in a way that conjures (however obliquely, however tongue-in-cheek) psychologically transportive encounters with the startling geology for which Iceland is known. Moreover, you look at them, and you are duly dazzled, yet there is something absurd about being dazzled by what is in effect detritus, namely a mess of snow cleared off the streets in order to make them passable. But in the meantime, something downright meditative develops, even a sense of wonder and difficult awe, and that’s also what happens with Sigurdsson’s new photographs, all taken of tents in the landscape.

Hrafnkell Sigurdsson’s new body of photographs picks up on his signature nature-culture collisions, here with vivid, head-on shots of various tents seemingly situated in the remote wilderness, but in fact all taken within a 50 minutes drive of Reykjavik, and sometimes a lot closer. In each photograph, the tent assumes a giant-sized part of the shot. Always in the middle as a looming monochromatic force, it, and not the surrounding landscape, is the dominant element. As much as there are suggestions of physically challenging, psychologically-charged encounters with nature in these tent scenes, there are also clear suggestions of glossy, product -hawking advertisements in some sleek outerwear catalogue, and you pay careful, almost acquisitive attention to the specifics of each tent and the differences between them: for instance a lime green one with an interesting flap, or a dark one the color of onyx, or another red as a sunrise, all of which would be good to use, all of which would be excellent to own. In Sigurdsson’s wilderness Pop, mass-produced sporting goods products infiltrate the natural vistas and amazing geologic formations where they are situated with startling effects; they at once fit in and disturb. In any event, these are the commercial days when, in order to have a “pure” wilderness experience, we first have to go shopping for all sorts of colorful, synthetic stuff which advertises good health and robust energy. Like his photographs of snow piles, Sigurdsson’s tents also succinctly occur at the border not only between city and landscape, but between old and new Iceland: the Iceland of big distances, remoteness, sweeping interiors, precarious winters, and widely scattered rural enclaves and the relatively new, urbanized, mobile, jazzed-up, recreational Iceland comprising a Scandinavian paradise in the north which is good for the health and the soul and just perfect for vacationing tourists. Or for back country trekkers with their requisite tents.

All of this feeds into Hrafnkell Sigurdsson’s photographs, yet what really singles them out is the uncanny way that typically austere and elemental, yet resolutely straightforward, shots of something so familiar as tents wind up so visually vital and richly enigmatic. A large black tent with a vaguely menacing air, erected on a snowy valley field, is clearly a tent, but in Sigurdsson’s photograph it takes on other complex associations. For one thing, its sloping form mimics outcroppings, various hills, rock shapes, or lava formations in the area. This is an artifice with very nature-like attributes, and once again you get the feeling that some kind of border between human (tents are, after all, designed for a very specific human use) and inhuman is being traversed. For another, this temporary, nomadic abode in the middle of nowhere also looks suspiciously alien, and I mean really alien, as if a UFO had landed to explore Iceland’s interior (from time to time Sigurdsson augments the otherworldly quality in his work by slightly manipulating the image on his computer.) Meanwhile, a bright crimson tent, tethered by ropes and spikes to a snow field, is at once brazen and fragile, but it’s also one of many instances when a slightly eerie beauty creeps in along with an almost unnerving loneliness. Here the tent seems to be in dialogue not just with the surrounding landscape, but with the cosmos writ large—with the snow-covered fields, and the vast, bluish-white sky, but also with what is under the fields, what lies behind the sky.

While Sigurdsson’s methodology, including computer alterations, is technologically advanced, his photographs remain austere and uncluttered, and in this sense he’s part of Minimalist-inflected strain of artmaking which has for long proved to be so potent in Iceland. However his photographs are also visually lush, and in any event such a combination of austerity and lushness is prime territory for this artist. I hate to refer to famous critics, and especially critics whose last names begin with the letter “B” (like Bakhtin or Baudrillard, Barthes or Benjamin) but in a post-Benjamin era it’s obvious that any number of painters have incorporated techniques of photographic representation into their work. Sigurdsson, on the other hand, is part of a new generation of artists who are incorporating distinctly painterly elements into their photographs, and indeed not only the visual complexity of his works, but also their size and shape, very much suggests painting per se. In his very painterly photos, everything clicks visually: the shape and color of the tents in the foreground, the empty, usually snowy expanses stretching off into the distance, acute natural light; skycapes, clouds, horizon lines. If you like pure retinal pleasure you get this in droves, although always with Sigurdsson’s kind of less-is-more elementalism. Personally, I think it likely that Hrafnkell Sigurdsson’s photographs of tents, which suggest a mediated nature in an ultra-mediated time, are ultimately a lot more connected with the tradition of landscape painting in Iceland than one would normally suppose, for instance with the paintings of Ásgrímur Jónsson and Thórarinn B. Thorláksson, or the bristling lavascapes of Jóhannes Kjarval. In his photographs, Sigurdsson never discloses any human activity, and he leaves it entirely ambiguous exactly why the tents are there. But still these pared-down encounters between tent and landscape amount to a quirky, but very compelling, engagement with this specific land and what it symbolizes, with this homeland and all that it means, with this landscape and the abiding pull that it still has (one guesses) on Sigurdsson’s psyche.

Gregory Volk