Hreinn Fridfinnsson: Artist in the Air

Under the title Artist in the air, Hreinn Friðfinnsson proposes a new personal exhibition at Galerie Papillon presenting works from the 1970s to nowdays. 

Hreinn Friðfinnsson (IS-1943) is one of Iceland’s key figures of conceptual art. Co-founder in 1965 of the SÚM Group and its eponymous gallery, which promoted the artistic avant-garde in Iceland and brought contemporary Icelandic art to the forefront of the international scene.

He was one of the very first artists to be exhibited at the Centre Pompidou, when it opened in 1977. Presented at New York’s Guggenheim Museum in 1982, his work was awarded a prize at Stockholm’s Carnegie Art Awards in 2000, and he went on to win Finland’s prestigious Ars Fennica prize, awarded annually since 1990 to a (usually Nordic) artist in the visual arts. In awarding the prize, Jean-Christophe Ammann, former director of Frankfurt’s Museum of Modern Art, described him as “a poet who speaks to us of light, wind, landscape, rock, crystals, balance and feeling…. His works fascinate with their acute sense of concept. Thanks to this he is able to capture the strongest emotions through the most ordinary means.”