Iceland 2022

Title: Perpetual Motion
Commissioner: Auður Jörundsdóttir, Icelandic Art Center
Curator: Mónica Bello
Exhibitor: Sigurður Guðjónsson

“Perpetual Motion“  blends concepts of space, energy and time into a multi-sensory sculpture which conveys visitors into an exploration of materiality at the edge of perceptual boundaries. The artwork adeptly combines an intriguing image and soundscape that transports us into a meditative visual and sonic experience.

The artwork is staged as a gigantic screen split into two perpendicular axes intersecting at a right angle. On the horizontal axis, a large floor projection occupies most of the space while interplaying with a vertical axis that ascends six meters. The screens depict an amplified compound of metal dust moved and magnified by the artist’s lens. This material is distorted and misshapen to a point where the original frame of reference is lost.

Industrial workshop debris becomes the essence and scenario for “Perpetual Motion“, the vision of an abstracted material scintillated by movement. It suggests the surface of the outermost planets, where alien geometries and forms hide and are held. Simultaneously, these visions entice us to enter a temporal lineal turning which is arranged as a paradoxical man-made structure; the perpetual motion machine that violates the laws of conservation of energy, only seen partially through its constant drift.

“Perpetual Motion“ brings attention to the continual flux of energy and matter, an unperturbed system challenging science and logic. The artist has cultivated a language through which he expresses a deep fascination for material transformations that take place in interplays of form and environment. In his works sound and image open up into matter’s own rhythms and disclose the processes that allow him to extend our eye-trained environments in newly-born hybrid forms. “Perpetual Motion” confronts the desire for a disordered state by imparting an imaginary geometry that nature does not provide. Inspired by the space of the Arsenale, “Perpetual Motion“ becomes a celebration of camera and vision, poetic experimentation, and perceptual spaces.