IslANDs - Compressed Realities - Exploded Photoworks

Icelandic Drift into the Indian Ocean-A prologueby
Rajeev Sethi
As we first met Gudjon Bjarnason his uncut jewel like country
was waking up to the sunrise of an early spring, after a long
winter night.
Ice crystals crackled beneath dark moss and virgin rays tore
into light air. Gudjon-stocky, smiling and swift in a SUV drove
us from Reykjavik Airport – sliver like drifting on a rocky sea.
Making a moonscape friendly with his passion for nature and
familiar with his state of Art knowhow of global art practices
and cross-cultural currents, we knew the land would soon
become a person.
We took an immediate fondness for this youthful multitasking
architect and joyous straightforward world trotter,
with a daughter and girlfriends almost the same age! The
time-defying, space and weather challenged landscape was
more predictable than our Nordic host, as he drove us through
craggy cliffs, raging rapids and temperamental geysers to an
amazing house he built bang on a beach. More a hideout
studio for himself, I suspect Gudjon’s forcefully deconstructed
statement was also formed to be as close to the best lobster
restaurant on the isle.
We ate all types of fish, saw all types of design initiatives,
witnessed all types of weather, and indulged in all experiences
- intangible and tangible - all in the course of four stretched
days, before ending this magical mystery tour with significant
excess baggage that only Gudjon could help us waive off with
one swish of his hand and long hair.
I will never forget our send off when on the way to the Airport
we stopped at one amongst many hot springs bubbling
between shallow ravines. Slipping into white steaming water
in borrowed black trunks, lying weightless under a grey sky
a few hours before taking off to return to a staid and stodgy
world on the wrong side of Northern lights… Ah!
Nothing surprised me as my friend always on the move,
chose to drop anchor in the calm and spiritually innovative
shore town of Puducherry, as a liminal space to park his mind
with its many fiercely agile and forever optimistic creative
endeavors. I expect that this unflappable and ever-flexible livewire
will adapt with easy grace, adjusting to an ethnological
zoo on his sturdy mobike racing through dusty by lanes of a
diverse countryside. But to be so prolific and mobile reaching
out through turbulent foothills of Meghalaya to the glitzy
glass towers of Shanghai, the chromozoned world of office
interiors and the mystical by lanes of spa healing- well, one
has to have the still Center of someone born in ice.
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