IslANDs - Painterly Experiments & Exploded Sculptures

GOlden IslANDs

- The global works of Gudjon Bjarnason

PAINTERLY EXPERIMENTS & EXPLODED SCULPTURES

MAIN CURATOR RICHARD VINE

CO-CURATORS

MAIN CURATOR

JÓN RICHARD PROPPĖ VINE

HENRY

CO-CURATORS

MEYRIC JÓN HUGHES PROPPĖ

HENRY MEYRIC HUGHES

GUDJON BJARNASON - ART & ARCHITECTURE ATELIERS

“There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so”.

-William Shakespeare

Index

1. Icelandic Drift into the Indian Ocean-A Prologue by Rajeev Sethi 10

2. Dark Flashes by Richard Vine 37

3. Beyond the Darkness by Henry Meyric Hughes 44

4. Poem by Doina Uricariu 54

5. LandSCapeS series 171

6. Boldness & Sensitivity by Bill FitzGibbons 190

7. Sculptures & Installations 191

8. Public Sculptures 237

9. Epilogue By Dr.K.K Chakravarty 250

10. Interview with Gudjon Bjarnason by Mridula Sharma 252

11. Profile 256

12. Authors’ Profiles 260

13. Special Acknowledgement & Gratitude 264

mONa lISa must ache

2014, print on synthetic canvas, oil paint and varnish, steel frame

Size variable (6 pieces, 158.1 x 296.6 cm)

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.

10

Each time Gudjon comes to Delhi, I get a new addition of

good news, repositioning his energetic spirit… honorable

invite for a large scale retrospective of his work over the last

three years at the Lalit Kala National Academy celebrating

their 60th year of existence… winning landmark architectural

commissions and competitions around the world, creating

new works composed of fertile experiments in merging

worlds of opposite ideas; observing emerging chaos within

order, pure abstraction versus representation, the conceptual

counter-posed with the real…

layering layer upon layer of grey tones and zeroed overlays,

creating a narrative of architecture through unstructured

volume, swaths of fluid black ink plunging across sheets of

white paper rolls as videos move the eye from an alchemy

of shifting planes.

Remember all this coming from someone born in a land

of constant flux- transforming under profound but eternal

cataclysms. Metamorphosis unseen by eyes that blink.

This edition Compressed Realities-Exploded Photoworks is

only one volume in a trilogy of publications named GOlden

IslANDs - the global works of Gudjon Bjarnason.

The different, yet coherently connected creative acts

celebrated by several internationally acclaimed authors

subliminally trough through a tunnel of darkness into

exploding prisms of light.

A master architect/artist has revealed a mirror that deflects

and reflects at the same time.

Consider planting dynamite into steel containers and blasting

them and piecing them together as unpredictable wholes,

11

sELF EXplosiOn

2014, painted print on realistic photo paper. Total size 296.0 x 306.1 cm

(6 pieces 90.3 x 146.8 each, detail shown)

12

VenUS RE:visited (from HistORy series)

2014, painted print on realistic photo paper

Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

13

GOlden ICElandic MountaIN Milk (from HistORy series)


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

14

GOlden ICElandic MountaIN Milk (from HistORy series)


Size 67.4 x 47.6 cm

15

The GOlden Third disruptiON (from HistORy series)


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

16

ORphan PAINting PaintINg (from HistORy series)

2014, painted print on realistic photo paper, ink

Size 67.4 x 47.6 cm

17

GOlden MoMEnts revISited over Stretch of Time (from HistORy series)


Size 67.4 x 47.6 cm

18

DescendINg PaintINg (from HistORy series)


Size 67.4 x 47.6 cm

19

Erasure PAINting PaintINg - with Sun out (from HistORy series)


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

20

Back black SquARE negATive (from HistORy series)


Size 109.0 x 109.0 cm

21

Progressive VisiONs balanced or a battle of black & white (from HistORy series)


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

22

Rorschach Abyssal Global GrINs (from HistORy series)


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

23

UNbLOCKed EntrOPies holed


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

24

OtHER wOR d/ls - with unExplained Pairs of Circes


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

25

GOlden dive INe Water CeremONies

2014, painted print on realistic photo paper, ink, steel frames & painted glass

Size 216.1 x 113.5 cm (2 pieces 90.3 x 113.5 & 1 piece 29.5 x 113.5)

26

ObscuRE:d UNimagINable ACTs dissected

2014, print on synthetic canvas, oil paint & varnish

Total Size 296.6 x 333.1 cm (3 pieces)

27

27

Die nemic Instints (from Jallikatu series)


Size 435.3 x 296.6 cm (upper detail shown)

28

Die nemic Insticts (from Jallikatu series)

2014, print on synthetic canvas, oil & varnish

Size 183.6 x 296.6 cm

29

AbstrACT bLACK BullFIGHTS (from Jallikattu series)


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

30

Bulls, Gods & Men CeremONies (from Jallikatu series)

2014, painted print on realistic photo paper, ink, steel frames & painted glass

Size 216.1 x 113.5 cm (2 pieces 90.3 x 113.5 & 1 piece 29.5 x 113.5 cm)

31

AbstrACT bLACK bullFIGHTS (from Jallikattu series)


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

32

AbstrACT bLACK bullFIGHTS (from Jallikattu series)


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

33

GOlden dARC/k VisiONs spotted


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

34

Swirling MemORies-MotiON dRAW with tear Drops


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

35

EmprisONed lINes Free-with straight white Lines


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

36

Dark Flashes

by Richard Vine

Gudjon Bjarnason’s art is based on three major principles:

disruption, darkening, and selectivity. While they shape his

photography, painting, and architectural design, these drives

are most dramatically evident in his sculpture.

Disruption is the first and most obvious effect of the

dynamite with which Bjarnason seeds steel construction

beams and blows them into twisted unpredictable shapes.

This explosiveness is, in effect, a thematic darkening of

his material, transposing obdurate steel from the realm of

reasonable, constructive order to that of eruptive, violent

energy. The mind of the sculptor—like that of the receptive

viewer—must be open to the violation of stable forms, to

fragmentation, to chance effects, to a search for a new and

less mundane formal structures.

Selectivity occurs when the exploded elements are assembled

into new sculptural configurations—whether scattered on

the floor, hung on the wall, or suspended from the ceiling.

Bjarnason’s strange juxtapositions and recombinations

constitute a refusal of “good taste” and conventional spatial

logic, a restoration of mystery to an artistic practice—and a

world—grown overly rigid and predictable.

This process involves an embrace of the Sublime, that psychologically

fraught aesthetic—first articulated in the 18th century—that finds

the highest value not in classical proportion, noble sentiments, and

graceful beauty but in ominous tumult, terrifying depth and darkness,

sheer chaos, and exhilarating heights. It links Bjarnason to those

works (especially of Romanticism and Expressionism) and those

experiences (e.g., standing before vast caverns, on mountaintops,

beside geysers or rushing rivers or pounding expansive seas) that

remind us of our vulnerability to the forces of nature, within us as

much as around us—experiences that thus reveal our ephemeral

yet defiant place in an indifferent cosmos. Even when the artist’s

newly assembled sculptural forms are painted white, their hue is

the whiteness of Melville’s whale—signifying at once everything

and nothing, the uncategorizable, the eternally elusive.

Bjarnason’s paintings are derived directly, via digital image transfer

to canvas, from his photographs, each of which records a flash

perception, an instant of time in the guise of a subject, a thing

before the lens. But those objects—a crumbling elephant sculpture,

a stylized blossom, a landscape ravaged by a typhoon, a young

woman’s face on a computer screen, protestors in the streets, a man

immolating himself—are all, like the artist’s sculptural fragments,

subjected to a darkening.

37

At times, the obfuscation is literal (when the images are printed in a

way that makes them look almost like negatives, when the paintings

are so unremittingly black as to verge upon illegibility) and, at other

times, figurative (when the pictures are interfered with in some

way: inverted, half blocked by geometric forms, multiplied into

grids, superimposed, etc.).

What, we might ask, is the artist hiding with these strategies of

disorder and blockage, and why? The answer, of course, is nothing.

Bjarnason’s work, rightly understood, is as straightforward as a

field order. He is not denying us visual information but rather

demonstrating, time and again, that visual information, when

received too directly and unthinkingly, is dangerously misleading.

Instant legibility gives us the impression that the world is

automatically accessible, its meaning as blatant as its objects and

sights. But Bjarnason’s disruptions, his darkening, his odd selections

remind us that all seeing is interpretation.

For us, there are no things-in-themselves, no self-evident meanings.

We must look and look again, must disentangle, must actively

recreate what our senses present us, must rigorously think, in order

to truly assess even the simplest flower.

38

WhITe EYEs-Wide Open FrAMes (from Rebel/Protest series)

2014, painted print on reaistic photo paper, ink

Size 67.4 x 109.0 cm

39

PRO test Ec/cho FrAMed (from Rebel/Protest series)


Size 67.4 x 109.0 cm

40

DAnce, DAnce RE:bel CLouds... (from Rebel/Protest series)

2014, painted print on reaistic photo paper, ink

Size 67.4 x 109.0 cm

41

Black Roses-Black Rose is a Rose


Size 67.4 x 109.0 cm

42

Wide Open SpLIT SpriNg wORlds (from Rebel/Protest series)

2014, painted print on realistic photo paper, ink, glass & steel frames

Size 59.2 x 95. each cm (20 pieces in all). Detail shown

43

Beyond the Darkness

by Henry Meyric Hughes

The darkness that pervades Gudjon Bjarnason’s work is fraught

with a very specific cultural significance. In the West, the

black has innumerable moral, psychological, symbolic, social

and religious connotations—some of them, contradictory,

like the positive associations of the black of the rich soil of

the Nile Delta in ancient Egypt, in contrast to the associations

with the Underworld (Hades) in Classical (Greek and Roman)

Antiquity, as well as with the dark recesses of the mind, with

brutality, death and mourning, and—in the Middle Ages–with

the Christian concepts of sin, guilt and suffering. Using black

as the symbol of death and oblivion seems to be common to

many cultures, both occidental and oriental.

What is, perhaps, less commonly realised in the West is

that it is only recently that black and white have come to

be recognised again as colours. Towards the end of the

fifteenth century, at the height of the European Renaissance,

Leonardo da Vinci had declared that black was not really

a colour. This view gained widespread acceptance after the

English scientist Isaac Newton demonstrated that was a

property intrinsic to light, and that “white” light could be

broken down through the prism into its five (or, as he later

believed, seven) constituents. As the poet, Alexander Pope,

put it, in his celebrated epitaph:

Nature and nature’s laws lay hid in night.

God said “let Newton be” and all was light

The Impressionists (notably, Manet and the young Renoir)

were among the first to rediscover the autonomous value of

black as a colour, and they were followed by others, including

Matisse. However, the title of a celebrated exhibition at the

newly established Galerie Maeght in Paris, in December

1948”—“Le noir est une couleur’ (Black is a colour)—still had

about it the ring of a challenge to popular belief, after nearly

three hundred years of Newtonian optics.

The period around the second third of the 18th century in

Europe is sometimes referred to as the Age of Enlightenment,

which the German philosopher Immanuel Kant identified

with mankind’s final coming of age, the emancipation of

the human consciousness from an immature state of grace.

The term Enlightenment itself suggests the “knowability” of

the physical and immaterial world through the white light

of reason, dispelling the dark shadows of chaos, ignorance

and superstition. There is a widespread tendency to view the

18th century Enlightenment of the French philosophes, such

Diderot, Montesquieu and Voltaire, in opposition to the dark

irrationality of 19th century German Romanticism. Yet, even

44

Denis Diderot, who was one of the leading spirits behind the

idea of the Encyclopédie, as summa of human knowledge,

acknowledged the limits to pure reason and the right of the

creative genius to irrational, even asocial behaviour, with his

exhortation to be “dark”: Soyez ténébreux!. In similar fashion

to the complementary powers of light and darkness, the

colour black was indissolubly linked—not merely opposed—

to its luminous counterpart, white.

Seen, above all, as the of the Romantics around 1800, it

followed white, as night followed day. For the Romantics,

it might be taken to veil or prefigure another world beyond

images and beyond visible or tangible reality: “Someone

managed it—he raised the veil of the goddess at Sais—but

what did he see? Wonder of wonders—he saw himself.”

Goethe was the principal opponent of Newton. He brought

together white and black, as is in their own right that gave

life to all the rest. As Rudolph Steiner wrote in his late 19thcentury

edition of Goethe’s scientific works: “Unlike his

contemporaries, Goethe did not see darkness as an absence

of light, but rather as polar to and interacting with light;

resulted from this interaction of light and shadow.” This

stood in contrast to natural science, which saw darkness as a

complete nothingness:

Goethe pictures to himself that light and darkness relate to each

other like the north and south pole of a magnet. The darkness can

weaken the light in its working power. Conversely, the light can

limit the energy of the darkness. In both cases, colour arises.

Goethe’s fundamentally different attitude to light and dark and the

colour black, in this instance, opened the way to a range of different

interpretations—fruitful misunderstandings, if you prefer—in the

20th century, starting with Vassily Kandinsky, who asserted in

Concerning the Spiritual in Art: “Two great divisions of colour occur

to the mind at the outset: into warm and cold, and into light and

dark,” the first pair of opposites being yellow and blue, and the

Even if we cannot believe, as did Kandinsky, in the scientific basis

for synaesthesia and the straightforwardly communicable physicalpsychological

properties of colour (vide the scientist Goethe),

we are still left with some form of individual belief in the social,

symbolic, iconographic significance of colour. In other words, our

perceptions of colour—besides being conditioned by the same

physical parameters—are unavoidably subject to a degree of

cultural relativism.

In the twentieth century, the colour black has played a notable

part in the thriving tradition of the monochrome, starting with the

celebrated pre-Revolutionary black square on a white ground of

Kazimir Malevich (1915), and continuing with Rodchenko’s triptych

45

of red, yellow and, well, blue (not black) of 1921, which

proclaimed the end of representation, and even of painting

itself.

This link continued through Rauschenberg’s black

monochromes of the early 1950s and Ad Reinhardt’s black

canvases of 1957 onwards, as well as Barnett Newman’s and

Mark Rothko’s use of black fields to evoke the Sublime.

In the last century, black has also carried political connotations

(first, Anarchism, then Fascism, in its various forms and,

most recently, the Islamic jihadi movement) and notions of

race and ethnic identity, exemplified both by the culture of

Harlem in the 1920s (jazz, sensuality, colours and patterns

inspired by African rhythms) and post-colonial racial identity,

from the 1970s onwards, in the work of artists such as Adrian

Piper (b. 1942) and Kara Walker (b. 1969) in the USA and

Yinka Shonibare (b. 1968) and Chris Ofili (b. 1968) in the UK.

One could argue that there are contradictory traditions of the

black monochrome—one tied to the sensual indulgence once

associated with the Roman Catholic religion, the other based

on the abstinence and denial representation associated both

with Protestantism and the Judaic faith. As an example of

the former, I would cite the experimentations of the French

painter Pierre Soulages (b. 1929) with the thick and sensuous

application of black paint with a spatula, conducted from the

1950s onwards, and his move towards a spectacular form of

ultrablack (outrenoir), from around 1975-80 onwards, with its

luminous effects and nuanced colouring. And as an example

of the latter, I might choose one of the many painters who

have used black for its symbolic value, as the expression of

the Sublime, as in the case of Ad Reinhardt minimalist Black

Squares, which, with their uniform surfaces, devoid of texture

or aesthetic ambitions, aspire to a quite different form of

other-worldliness, behind the veil of appearances.

This is the dualist tradition that Gudjon Bjarnason—never

completely eschewing representation of the world as we live

it and see it—assimilates and repurposes in a body of work

remarkable for its illuminating darkness.

46

WanderINg Soul DREAM-INg (from Hazy Clouds series)


Size 90.3 x 146.8 cm

47

EX Exedousl DREAM-INg (from Hazy Clouds series)

2014, painted print on realistic photo paper, ink.

Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

48

Descendence (from Skies, Clouds & Heavens series)


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

49

ProgRE:seed un CateGOrized Growth


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

50

OPulus experIMEnts (from CyclONE forest series)


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

51

SoME kIND of saME Beautiful


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

52

The Steel God Genesis

Lui Gudjon Bjarnason

Aleg nume pentru nou-născuţii de azi şi de mâine

Literele sunt împreună în numele tău Eloah care înseamnă mighty, strong,

prominent,

doar primele două litere ale numelui Eloah înseamnă putere,

El, după chipul şi asemănarea Lui, ne frâmântă în palme,

dă formă acestor movile de lut.

În vreme ce tu,

Iţi spun tu,

ca unui copil, ca unui prieten, ca unui duhovnic

tu semeni grâunţe de cutremur şi stihii în oţel,

Desparţi trupul oţelului, cum altădată Dumnezeu pământul de ape

şi o smulgi pe Eva, femeia lui Adam, din chiar coasta lui,

Semeni metalul în ciosvârte, împarţi sute de aşchii din el,

la cina noastră de taină

Care trădează şi peştii şi îmbucătura de pâine

Sau le ascund în forme şi foetuşi

Care fug de vechile specii, de părinţii cunoscuţi.

Exploziile tale în oţel înfig un berbece în atomii trufaşi de metal

Ce se credeau nemuritori,

aprind în ochii noştri o flacără de sudură,

o lacrimă, o licărire,

o emoţie mighty, strong, prominent.

Doina Uricariu

(New York, 3 ianuarie 2015)

Explozia în oţel

e ca un fiu rătăcitor,

alege căi neumblate.

unde sunt mugurii şi frunzele verzi într-o grămadă de lemne aşezată lângă

pereţii casei?

Unde e pădurea din care au fost tăiaţi copacii ?

Unde sunt însinguraţii părinţi

ai acestui foc aprins în cămin,

In care arzi ?

54

The Steel God Genesis

For Gudjon Bjarnason Bjarnason

I chose names for the newly-born of today and tomorrow

Letters gathered in your name Eloah, mean mighty, strong, prominent,

only the first two letters in the name Eloah stand for strength,

He, made in His likeness, kneads us with his hands,

and shape these mounds of clay.

Whilst you,

I say you,

like a child, like a friend, like a confessor

you saw seeds of earthquakes and steel storms,

Part the body of steel, as once God divided the earth from the waters

and pulled Eve, the woman of Adam, out of his very rib,

You saw metal like body parts, hundreds of splinters,

at our last supper

Which betrays the fish and the loaf of bread

Or hide them in forms and fetuses

Running away from the old species, from known parents.

Your explosions in steel skewer a ram in the arrogant atoms of metal

Which thought of themselves immortal,

light a welding flame in our eyes,

a tear, a glimmer,

an emotion mighty, strong, prominent.

Doina Uricariu

(New York, Jan. 3, 2015)

Credits Doina Uricariu poem/English translation:

USA Institute: Christina Procter, Associate Editor, Trend Magazine, Santa Fe,

NM, USA, with Livio Dimitriu

The explosion in steel

is like a wondering son,

who takes only paths unbeaten,

where are the buds and green leaves in the wood piled against the walls of

the house?

Where is the forest where the trees were cut from?

Where are the lonely parents

of this flame in the fireplace,

Where you are burning?

55

The otHER sIDe of CurioUSness (from SADhu series)

2014, painted print on realistic photo paper, ink, varnished steel frames & painted glass

Size 326.1 x 296.6 cm (6 pieces, upper detail shown)

56

Sleep, Slip GOlden drE:m WalkHERs (from SADhu series)


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

57

GOlden GloBAL CreATures sectiONed (from SADhu series)


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

58

Internal dARCenings maniFest (from SADhu series)


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

59

GOlden REALties seveRE:d (from SADhu series)


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

60

GOlden MOMents squAREd (from SADhu series)


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

61

AbstrACT FormATIONs at the heART of somethiNg missINg (from SADhu series)


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

62

GOlden CompilatiONs (from SADhu series)


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

63

The otHER sIDes of Midnights(from SADhu series)


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

64

WhIStle BloWEr BLOWn (from SADhu series)


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

65

SaturATed swirlIN CrITical Mass


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

66

CognITive obliterATIIONs

2014, painted print on synthetic canvas, oil paint & varnish

Size 183.6 x 113.5 cm

67

TurmOIL-UnIDentified PAINtings (from UnIDentified series)


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm each

68

UNIdentified PAINting (from UnIDentified series)

2014, Painted print on synthetic canvas, oil & paint

Size 183.6 x 113.5 cm

69

UnIDentified VisiONs-WhITe wide EYEs (from UnIDentified series)


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

70

Craddle PERspectives (from UnIDentified series)


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

71

SomeHERe UnIDentified Acts of Marks (from UnIDentified series)


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

72

MEdia PAINting mISsing Monk


Size 67.4 x 109.0 cm

73

MEdia PAINting standINg still?


Size 47.6 x 67.4cm

74

RE: UnknOWN TerrITories befORe:


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

75

AccIDental Occurance Desert


Size 67.4 x 47.6 cm

76

Darkened EnlightMEnt highlighted


Size 90.3 x 146.8 cm

77

EXploded VisiON Live


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

78

I’mpossible ErridicATiONs BeyONd


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

79

BEyond EXplosive Sky eyes


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

80

Balanced MEdia DISasters XXX

2014, print on synthetic canvas, oil paint & varnish, steel frame

Size 296.6 x 480.3 cm (3 pieces)

81

If, If WE ONly knEW


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

82

UnknOWN Circumstances


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

83

GOlden MATERializatiON ON


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

84

Necessary BlockAGE?


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

85

OrigINal unReasons


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

86

Underneath OUR beauties


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

87

WONder REflectiONs!


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

88

CHARRmed situATiONs


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

89

Lost Last TRANSlatiONs Circled


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

90

AccIDental SynchrONiITies


Size 183.3 x 183.3 cm

91

Compressed Circled AgressiONs


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

92

Wild Wild Liberties Circle I’mposed


Size 67.4 x 109.0 cm

93

bLACK DISaster striped bare


Size 90.3 x 146.8 cm

94

Scatt HER ed gLIMPses


Size 90.3 x 146.8 cm

95

CreATive wANDerings striped


Size 67.4 x 109.0 cm

96

With out Notice with IN


Size 67.4 x 67.4 cm

97

EYEs of the Beholder FLASH


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

98

GOlden BegiNnINgs ArchITecture


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

99

CRYstalized analysed sensITized.


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

100

NO way, angel.


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

101

VisiONs of flamINg SOFT fiRE: withIN


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

102

Ghosts of UN I’magINary INtrusiONs


Size 67.6 x 109.0 cm

103

Gaze MotHER nATure


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

104

HumOR OUS MATERilizatiON Alert


Size 183.3 x 113.5 cm

105

NocTURnal INvitATiON


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

106

GOlden SeverAGE


Size 183.6 x 183.6 cm

107

SUBlime PenetrATiONs


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

108

On BegINnINg THE eEND.


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

109

The MoMEnts Un THINKable BEyonds


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

110

CRYstal qANTums!

2014, print on synthetic canvas, oil paint & varnish, steel frames & painted glass

Size 296.6 x 480.3cm 3 pieces

111

ToDAYs Beautiful MEmories


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

112

Silent pARTners of abstrACT PersONalITy


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

113

Happy Black SquARE with YOU crusINg Angels


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

114

bEACH REvealATiONs blast!


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

115

Wild hORses RE:flected


Size 67.4 x 47.6 cm

116

EXplosiONs in the Sky

2014, painted print on synthetic canvas, oil paint, varnish, steel frame & painted glass


117

Tangled REALities


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

118

Cursed c louds c circled


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

119

P ink LOve


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

120

ComPREssed Cycles



121

CoMe pressed GravITies


Size 67.4 x 47.6 cm

122

EcstATic jYOUrnies


Size 292.6 x 399.5 cm (6 pieces, lower detail shown)

123

DisINtegrated Parallelles


Size 67.4 x 109.0 cm

124

EXploded floWErs

2014, painted print on synthetic canvas

Size 296.6 x 183.3 cm

125

INfintile MoMEntal Spurs


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

126

Eurika! EmbryONic Architectures


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

127

Art Ripples, ripples

2014, painted print on semi-realistic photo paper, ink

Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

128

SubcONcioUS dWellings

2014, painted print on realisitic photo paper, ink

Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

129

EX Exploded


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

130

I’mage underneATh the Vails


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

131

GOlden red red red Lips


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

132

OpposSITE cONstructiON DestructiON


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

133

AtONal dWELL-INg

2014, painted print on realistic paper, ink

Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

134

HeavINgly archITecture emrbyONic skys.


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

135

Black Mass


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

136

GOlden ReflectiONs

2014, painted print on realistic photo paper, ink, painted glass

Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

137

UnkOWN jOURney


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

138

Strip lit pAINT Horizontal NegATive

2014, painted print realistic photo paper, ink

Size 67.4 x 47.6 cm

139

The INstinct of animalistic Shark playINg Animal


Size 67.6 x 47.6 cm

140

Down BeyONd recoqnitiON

2014, painted print on synthetic canvas, oil paint, varnish & steel frame

Size 296.6 x 397.2 cm (4 pieces, center detail shown)

141

Distur bed Peacock deranged


Size 67.6 x 47.4 cm

142

GOlden GOlden SquAREs


Size 47.6 x 67.6 cm

143

Viva Savoye!


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

144

ON PaviliON Blast


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

145

Farstreched House twice blown


Size 67.6 x 47.6 cm

146

Black Disintegration


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

147

Delirious post Postgreens


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

148

Strip PAINting


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

149

Black DisINtegratiON


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

150

Unknown entITy


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

151

Sutten appearance


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

152

Th is is-My BEautiful house


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

153

RollINg elements


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

154

OverrIDden RE:ferance


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

155

tITle lost beyound comprehensiON


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

156

Vertical OblITerATiON


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

157

High Tiger observed


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

158

The mIS taken formatiON of the high Fahne


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

159

Arch high Over Tones


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

160

Double black undefINed


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

161

Striped mask


Size 47.6 x 67.4.6 cm

162

AbstrACT FormATiONs at the mINd of somethINg missINg (from SADhu series)


Size 183.6 x 96.6 cm

163

DerivATiONs of driftINg mINds

2014, print on synthetic canvas, oil paint and varnish


164

Humor OUS MATERlizatiON Alert, CognITive obliterATiONs & EXplosiONs in the Sky



165

AccIDental SynchrONITies, ComPREssed Cycles & EcstATic JYOUrnies



166

UnknOWN Psychies BeYOUnd

2014, painted print on synthetic canvas, steel frames, oil paint and varnish

Size 396.1 x 296.6 cm

167

Between HemISpheres



168

De flowered HarmONies



169

DerivATiONs in desert ISlands



170

LandSCapeS series

GOlden SquAREd LandSCapeS I, II, III, IV & V (from LandSCapeS series)



172

GOlden SquAREd LandSCapeS! (from LandSCapeS series)

2014, painted print on realistic photo paper.

Size 109.0 x 109.0 cm

173

GOlden LandSCapeS Presences VI (from LandSCapeS series)


Size 109.0 x 109.0 cm

174

GOlden divine (from LandSCapeS series)


Size 67.4 x 109.0 cm

175

Glacier InteruptiON (from LandScapeS series)


Size 67.4 x 109.0 cm

176

GOlden Souls vISible I, II, I & iV (from LandSCapeS series)



177

GOlden Waterfalls spirited (from LandSCapeS series)


Size 67.4 x 109.0 cm

178

LandSCape INterruptiONs (from LandSCape series)


Size 67.4 x 109.0 cm

179

In the beINg of SUNset V (from LandSCapeS series)


Size 67.4 x 109.0 cm

180

GOlden HorizON Sunsets deMATERilized II,III, IV & VI (from LandSCapeS series)



181

HuntINg Lakes SqAREd (from LandSCapeS series)


Size 67.4 x 109.0 cm

182

IN States of BeINg- (from LandSCapeS series)



183

ON digital INteriors (from Satellite Series)


Size 67.4 x 109.0 cm

184

GOlden Organics (from Satellite series)



185

LandSCapeS Witnessed – INdpendant Rocks I (from LandSCapeS series)


Size 67.4 x 109.0 cm

186

LandSCapeS Witnessed-Independent Rocks II (from LandSCapeS series)


Size 67.4 x 109.0 cm

187

LandSCapeS – Independent Rocks III (from LandSCapeS series)


Size 67.4 x 109.0 cm

188

IN States of BeINg- (from LandSCapeS series)



189

Boldness & Sensitivity

by Bill FitzGibbons

Icelandic multi-media artist Gudjon Bjarnason seamlessly

unites boldness and sensitivity, creating multifaceted

energy within his work. By utilizing most creative means of

expression, including the use of explosives for the making of

his animated sculptures along with a forceful uninterrupted

flow of multi-layered visual images based upon abstraction

versus representation, chance and unpredictability versus

rationality, Bjarnason has created strong cultural bonds; a

lasting positive experience in Texas, USA.

do the same. The new, challenging body of work, now created

in India but covering the vast arenas of the world wherein

the artist thrives, “GOlden IslANDs,” most certainly inspires

similar thoughts and actions.

His memorable exhibition “DySTOPic ProgressiONs” held in

2013 at Blue Star Contemporary Art Museum in San Antonio,

for which I was the executive director at the time, required

many layers of community involvement, and bonded a wide

variety of people into an enthusiastic team who all helped to

realize his innovative aims. The skills that he encompasses

as an architect were, to my belief, then critical to forging this

large group of people to work as a coordinated team and to

complete his vision on time.

Gudjon’s work ethic and strict adherence to his aesthetic

were no less than inspiring to the young artists and

collaborators that helped with materializing his creative

endeavors. Bjarnason’s work bridges cultural gaps, elicits

pride throughout the community, and empowers others to

190

Sculptures & Installations

ChroMEd new wORlds

Exploded & chromed steel profiles

Installation size approx. 4000.0 x 2000.0 cm

192

EXplosiON VisiON

2014, print on realistic photo paper

Size 67.4 x 109.0 cm

193

DySTOPic Rift

2012, exploded steel pipes

Size approx. 120.0 x 170.0 x 70.0 cm

194

Explosion Works & Installations

Blue Star Contemporary Art Center

195

EXplosiON High rISe

2014, print on realistic photo paper.

Size 67.4 x 109.0 cm

196

DySTOPic ProgressiONs

2012, 12 exploded steel profiles on floor & walls

Size variable

197

TwIN twINned DestINies

2012, exploded steel profiles, nylon rope

Size 150.0 x 330.0 x 20.0 cm

198

DySTOPic ProgressiONs

2012, 12 exploded steel profiles on floor

Size variable

199

200

Exploded lINes

2012, various exploded steel profiles

Size variable


201

Various Explosion Works & Installations

202


203

Various Explosion Works & Installations

204

Exploded Railway House

2012, steel & varnish

Size approx. 120.0 x 120.0 x 30.0 cm

205

DySTOPic VisiONs Progressed

2012, print on acetate film, plexiglass, steel frames

Size 246.0 x 644.0 cm

206

EXploded DoORs Into Abyss


Size 67.4 x 109.0 cm

207

EXploded UrINal-for R !

2014, print on photo paper

Size 67.4 x 90.0 cm

208

EXploded UrINal close UP-for R !I


Size 109.0 x 67.4 cm

209

EXploded UrINal BLOW UP-for R !II


Size 109.0 x 67.4 cm

210

211

EXplosiON wORks

2013, print on photo paper


212

EXplosiON wORks



213

EXploded FragMEnt-with a hole


Size 109.0 x 67.4 cm

214

EXplosiON FragMent


Size 67.4 x 109.0 cm

215

EXplosiON FragMent


Size 67.4 x 109.0 cm

216

EXplosiON FragMEnt


Size 109.0 x 67.4 cm

217


218

EXploded Tubes


Size 67.4 x 109.0 cm

219

EXploded irregular lINes


Size 67.4 x 109.0 cm

220

EXploded lINe


Size 67.4 x 109.0 cm

221

Explosion work details

222

I´M-age MingleMEnt

2006, exploded metal bars

Size approx. 260.0 x 300.0 x 60.0 cm

223

Self detONAted JUDDgement

Exploded metal profiles

2006, 300.0 x 600.0 x 30.0 cm

224

Individual explosion works & various installations

225


226


227

EXplosiON DocuMEnt

2012, printed acetate film, plexiglass, steel frames

Size 120.0 x 400.0 cm (40 pieces)

228

Exploded RE.flectiONs

2012, printed acetate film on plexiglass, steel frames

Size 297.0 x 330.0 cm (6 pieces)

229

ABstrACT REaliTies I & II

2012, printed acetate film, plexiglass,steel frames


230

CognITive INteruptiONs

2012, painted printed paper rolls. Size variable

Max Mueller Bhavan

231

GOlden SectiONs

Exhibition view

2015, Lalit Kala National Academy, New Delhi, India

232

GOlden SectiONs

Exhibition view

2015, Lalit Kala National Academy, New Delhi, India

233

The Big SuIT

2013, printed silk. Size variable

In collaboration with Gígja Ísis

234

Explosion crew at Texas ranch.

In photo among others: Gudjon Bjarnason, Bill & Ann FitzGibbons, George Schroder, Mark & Angela Walley

235

Public Sculptures

Public Park Sculptures “Chaotic Fields”

China study

238

Public Sculptures “Chaotic Fields”

Studies

239


Studies

240

Public Park Sculptures “Chaotic Fields”

China studies

241


Studies

242

Public Park Sculptures

Studies

243


China study

244

“Chaotic Fields”

Central Park sculptures study

245

Outdoor Public Sculptures “Chaotic projectiONs”

Hayatt Hotel-in collaboration with Rajeev Sethi

246

DySTOPic ProgressiONS-with Sebastian arrows

2014, exploded steel profiles, metal bars

Size 600 x 600 x 600 cm

247

Duggal Greenhouse development & waterfront park

2015, Brooklyn Navy Yard, New York, USA

248

Duggal Greenhouse development & waterfront park

2015, Brooklyn Navy Yard, New York, USA

249

Epilogue

By Dr.K.K Chakravarty

Gudjon’s design imagination encompasses the extreme

frontiers of the world, of the Atlantic and Indian Ocean,

Iceland and Himalayas, both prone to volcanic and tectonic

convulsions. He juxtaposes images drawn from the unutterable

solitude and heart-wrenching beauty of glacial snowscapes

with images of a machine civilisation. He unites them by

patterns latent in their deformations, induced by nature

or human agency. His work is a registral, textural, timbral

ensemble made of a partnership of painting, sculpture,

mosaic and mural, arranged in processional and recessional

planes. In a flitting spark of life in a transient moment, a

blend is created, of dissonance and repose, discipline and

freedom. History is revisited and overwritten with images

of Venus in Primavera, Christ at the Last Supper, Guernica,

Jallikattu bull fights, Sanctuary facades, naves and choirs,

squinches, arches, vaults, domes and ceilings of cathedrals,

topographies of land, waters, currents and mountains.

Faces and figures are fused and cognitively obliterated in

photo negatives of a mass of humanity, milling around to

describe a history of discontent. Architecture, old and recent,

lattice work, mosaic floors, piloti, releasing infill from frame,

tiger stripes burning bright, a deranged peacock, stamping,

pouncing bulls, are viewed through light and shadow. Ascetics

smoke hubble bubble, offer speaking hand gestures, wear

matted hair, hold tridents, tend fire and preach. Dark voids

of gates explode before us. The nocturnal face of structures,

mantled in shadow, is juxtaposed against their lit faces.

Trusses and buttresses, steel frames and painted glasses,

a temple pinnacle, truncated heads and busts framed in

windows are presented to view. A floating ship convergent

images are offered of skies, clouds, sharp, jagged, snow

capped peaks, traversed by the dark zoomorphic shape of a

wandering, dreaming, peripatetic soul. Tortured branches of

trees, forests, churned and tossed by cyclone, rock strewn

deserts, glaciers, icebergs immersed in water, cataracts

roaring through desolate snowscapes, digital landscapes

animated by a cardiovascular circulation and respiration of

living forms are shown as in superimposed layers of dark and

white splashes in photonegatives.

Exploded steel pipes and frames pierced by stakes look like

birds. These are hung with nylon ropes and etch a figural

pattern across the wall. Shadows nestle below the bars, on

the wall and ground. Mouths agape in conversation, the pipes

span a dystrophic rift. Paper rolls and slides on the ground,

dripping with white, to create a pattern across a museum

wall, which is hung with photo frames. Corded steel ropes,

sparkling, stellar shapes emerge from distant depths. Oil paint

and varnish pick out dynamic, twisted, anthropomorphic

250

forms marching through partitioned panels.

Concentric circles converge to the centre of a lotiform ceiling,

like turbulent waters in a whirlpool. Public and water

park sculptures use wires, metal planks, pillars, flowering columns,

create primeval organic animal forms and offer chaotic

fields of intertwined ethereal, fractal, optic art shapes.

Instead of looking accidental, Gudjon’s forms appear like

dramatis personae on the immense stage and canvas of the

universe, imitating nature, not as it is, but in its own manner

of operation, imposing, as it were, a sympathetic compulsion.

These create a coruscating, vibrant, synesthetic dialogue –

between life and art. The apparently random, indeterminate,

fortuitous deformations emulate non-random processes of

nature. These build up a cathartic sense of the human species

caught up in the ever widening circles of hurtling galaxies

in the vast immensity of the universe.

The steel God emerges in splinters, but the buds, grass and

forest are destroyed and a ram is skewered in the arrogant

atom of metal, which thought itself immortal. He provides a

comment on machine civilization, in which technology outstrips

wisdom, because of the fragility of human beings who

control such technology.

A chromatic abstraction and improvisation creates vibrant,

pneumatic shapes, in a play on solids and voids, lines and curves,

circles and cylinders, with a coloristic use of light and shadows.

The fragmentation, recombination dismemberment and

transgression of materials provides an unfolding experience

of time and space continuum. Luminodynamic and shifting

timelight resonances create anti-style landscapes, differently

articulated and synchronized in an aleatory music. To recall

Dylan Thomas, “Vision and Prayer”: ‘with a thousand lights,

a sandy beach and clouds are assembled behind horizontal

and vertical bars of light and shade.’

Gudjon finds in the silence of nature echoes of his soul. He

breathes speech, respiration and meaning into them. He illustrates

the transformative impact of thinking on m a t -

ter. In Doina Uricaria’s poem “Letters gathered in the name

of Eloah”, he finds seeds of earthquakes and storms, as God

takes earth from the waters, and pulls Eve out of Adam’s rib.

251

Interview with Gudjon Bjarnason

by Mridula Sharma

How did you get initiated into art?

I guess I will have to describe myself primarily as a visual

person. Ever since early childhood I have taken immense joy

in drawing and composing. However, I firstly studied law and

philosophy before deciding, more truthful to my nature, to

become an architect. As a student of architecture I had two

revolutionary “deconstructivist” architects, Peter Eisenman

and Daniel Libeskind as instructors who convinced me that

the practice art and architecture could completely coexist.

Both extremes have, from an existentialist point of view,

the equal capacity of personal expression. The boundaries

of architecture had simply to be changed and expanded

for architecture encompass the traits of art. So instead of

contemplating weather I should become a fish or a bird –

I decided early on to become a flyfish, pursuing through

parallel education two professions simultaneously as one.

Art before architecture or vice versa?

Art, as a study of creativity and human development has a

much broader scope of reference than architecture.

I see my activity, deep down at the base, being primarily

a conceptual art practice dealing with many mediums,

drawings, painting, sculpture, video, sound and design and

architecture. Hence architectural making becomes simply

one additional media of expression.

Ergo sum, I’m a multimedia conceptual artist doing

architecture among other creative things.

Any preference for materials?

As a multi-media artist I welcome various material approaches.

However, all materials have some metaphorical meaning

attached to their nature e.g. steel makes up sixty percent of

our planet and our country sides and cities are being arrogantly

wallpapered by pictures of politicians and commercial

slogans on synthetic canvas-a material I frequently use

to turn against these same forces that our visually polluting

our environment. As a conceptual artist/architect making

sculptural buildings I sense a certain social responsibility and

I only use natural materials that create depth over time and

age gracefully. There is little poetry in shallow fakes.

Why the “explosion” art?

As an artist I’m most interested in the development of art, its

theory and in particular the psychological methods of intense

and free flowing creativity as well as the interplay of freedom

versus oppression. The use of explosives as part of my art

making process has several reasons. The unpredicted results

252

sparkle the imagination through animated formations which

bypass the capacity and limit of my own imagination. From

the perspective of art history, art that is indeed telepathically

made, by default nobody is present at its dangerous

making, signifies a progressive step in the post modern ”end

game” of sculptural practice. The use of military power is a

novel approach to art making, an additional expansion of

domain. Why not tap into those forces ofsociety for positive

development that gulp up large part of the world’s income.

Lastly, I welcome the accidental nature of my explosive art

making and the necessary redefinition of aesthetics. Our

lives and destinies are much more governed by coincidences,

accidents and the irrational than most of us ever dare to

admit.

What were the initial international reactions to this form?

My explosive installations have caused quite a media spectacle

and opened up new ways and viewpoints of discussing art

in journalistic and art professional media. Of course, this art

form, where I use various charges of dynamite to create and

control installations the same way a traditional painter uses

various color mixes as a tool while a painting has left a lot

of people confused in their search for obvious content and

meaning.

From the very beginning I have always maintained that my

exploded pieces are “embryonic architecture” architectural

seeds of freedom and democracy waiting manifestation. Now

I’m truly making “exploded buildings” in many places. large

and small. Structures that majestically open up as enchanted

flowers to their users.

Your favorite pieces and why?

One should never have to distinguish between their children.

My work today, after years of practice, is at heart in its modus

operandi one seamless web, a family of interconnected

creations where as part of the whole each thing has a purpose

serving the larger philosophical whole as to create some unity

of thought.

In this light I see my paintings, who are a testimony to the

invisible dynamic forces that shape our societies as building

blueprints and finally, my free and chaotic steel sculptures,

exploded or not, as architectural models, my videos as

detail documents. All these factors magically lead to and

contribute to the creation of architectural wonders, gracefully

manifesting the place of architecture as the divine mothers

of the arts and a catalyst for creativity and positive social

change.

253

sELF pORtrait OR


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

254

Profile

Profile

Gudjon Bjarnason

Gudjon Bjarnason (b. 1959), the founder and creative director

of GB-AAA (Gudjon Bjarnason Art & Architecture Ateliers) is a

sculptor, visual artist, architect and urban planner who lives and

works out of Reykjavik, New York and Pondicherry in South-

India.

He has been an internationally practicing architect and multimedia

artist over two decades and has had over fourty art

and design exhibitions, often of his conceptual sculptural/

architectural installations whereas he has often utilized explosives

for systematic deformations of metals commonly originating

from the building industry.

The pyrotechnical installations have frequently been exhibited

along with his stark, graphically complex, black/white/gray-scale

multi-layered, semi-transparent, semi-automatic paintings/

prints, slow motions videos and in situ negative photography

often along with architectural models and art books in museums,

biennales and galleries across the United States, Asia and Europe

including the Nordic countries.

After graduating from The Reykjavik Junior Collage (MR) Gudjon

studied preliminary law and philosophy at the University of

Iceland. Hencefort, after fast phased global travels of cultural

studies, he headed for USA and enrolled in architecture, design

and painting at The Rhode Island School of Design, Providence,

(BFA and B.Arch honors), painting and sculpture at The School of

Visual Arts, New York (MFA in Painting and Sculpture) and, finally,

architectural design and city planning at Columbia University,

New York (M.ARCH II in Urban Planning and Building Design)

where he graduated in 1990 with excellency.

He has taught art and architecture at the Rhode Island School of

Design, the USA Institute at the New Jersey Institute of Technology

and the Technical University of Verona, Pratt University, Brooklyn,

Parsons School of Design, New York as well as the Icelandic

School of Architecture (ISARK) where he was one of its founders,

a teacher and first managing director.

In October 2011, Gudjon established GB-AAA; progressive art

and architectural ateliers under his own name, operating out

of Pondicherry, Reykjavik and New York which are presently

engaged in the design of numerous highly creative large scale

modern buildings as well as cultural projects/exhibits in various

cities in India as well as in China, Europe and the USA.

As a leading architects his atelier GB-AAA, were recently selected

first place winners in several Indian architectural competitions of

national and international importance e.g.: SICPAC - The Shillong

International Center for Performance Art and Culture, size

23,500 sq. m., which contains four major auditoriums halls, the

National Tribal Museum for the Arts, the Shillong Contemporary

Art Center as well as an outdoor amphitheater seating 20,000

spectators.

256

According to the winning master plan, phase II of the SICPAC

cultural complex will include a hotel with a guest house annex,

a high-end art and crafts/design mall with a cinemaplex, a

theater, dance academy and an international residency for

artists, designers and musicians. GB-AAA was also the selected

architects for the design of The Ampati Cultural Center, Meghalaya

(auditoriums, exhibitions spaces and arts and crafts museum),

the Tura Cultural Center (auditoriums and exhibitions spaces and

arts and crafts museum), and the Ampati International Football

Stadium. Furthermore, Gudjon/GB-AAA were selected for “The

Orange Stadium”; an international multi-sports arena, containing

a sports museum in Tura, Meghalaya.

In 2013 GB-AAA was nominated for the best designed store for a

fashion outlet the new Hyderabad airport. Additionally, in 2014

GB-AAA participated in an international competition for a Buddha

memorial and museum in Patna, Bihar which generated much

interest. Gudjon was selected by the Sikh community in Delhi

in 2015 to make a proposal for a new progressive secondary

school in South Delhi.

In 2015 Gudjon was selected leading architect for the AB Luxury

Resort, Villas and Spa in South-Pondicherry on 40 acres of land.

Furthermore, he was selected as a finalist for the upcoming

Pondicherry Multi-cultural Municipal Art Center and 2017 year

Gudjon was selected the architectural designer for the innovative

SVARAM-Musical Instruments & Research in Auroville, Tamil

Nadu.

Gudjon sat on the editorial board of the Icelandic magazine

“Architecture & Planning” for a decade and has published

writings in journals on architecture and art in international design

magazines.

A number of publications have been published and dedicated

to Gudjon’s work, such as “Minimal Baroque”; two catalogs

published by the Nordic House in Reykjavik in 1996 when

Gudjon was selected the institution’s Summer Artist of the

Year. “Contemporary Masters” was published by Art Source Inc.

Switzerland, “In The Forbidden Landscape”was published by the

Henie Onstad Art Centre, Norway and “EXploding MEaning”, a

237 page art book was, in addtion, published by The Reykjavik Art

Museum which features a main article by Art in America´s man.

editor, Richard Vine and 25 other distinguished writers e.g.: Lilly

Wei, Dominique Nahas, Thor Vilhjálmsson and the international

artist Dennis Oppenheim. Moreover, catalogues on his multimedia

works have been published by HP Garcia gallery, New York

with essays by collection “The Modern Movement: Pentimenti

and other Tectonic Fables” by Prof. Livio G. Dimitriu, published

by the USA Institute.

Since 2014, he has creatively collaborated, under the name G&B

design, with the Stockholm based fashion designer Gigja Isis on

luxury domestic design and fashion items utilizing the pictorial

graphic world of his multi-layered paintings and politically based

photography as a textile iconography.

257

Symposiums on Gudjon´s art and architecture have been held at

Suny Collage, Westchester, NY, The Scandinavian Art Foundation,

NY, The Reykjavik Art Museum and he was selected to be one

of the honorary opening speakers as an acclaimed sculptor at

SCALE - a gathering of sculptors; an international symposium on

sculpture and the environment held in 2012 in San Antonio, Texas

at the invitation of National Endovement for the Arts. USA. In

the fall of 2013 Gudjon was invited to give a talk at the National

Museum of Art in Beijing.

Public documentary films on his explosive art works have been

made in Reykjavik by Thorfinnur Gudnason in 2000 (GUDJON)

and by Walley films, in Texas, in 2012 (DySTOPic ProgressiONs).

Suyojan Film in New-Delhi recently completed a documentary on

his then recent art and architectural endeavors in India (GOlden

SectiONs).

Gudjon has upcoming art and architectural exhibits in India,

Europe and the USA. In January 2015 Gudjon was invited, for

the first time in the history of the institution, to exhibit in all the

main galleries (5000 sq. m.) of the prestigious Lalit Kala Academy,

The National Academy of Arts, New Delhi in the celebration of

the 60th anniversary of the institution. Consequently, he has

been selected to represent his native country, Iceland, at the

prestigious India Art Triennial, New Delhi.

Three new publications on his recent art and design work will be

published in conjunction with a travelling exhibit launching at

Habitat Art Center, New Delhi in 2018, named “GOldens IslANDs.”

Contributing writers are the world-known curator and

scenographer Rajeev Sethi, senior editor of Art in America dr.

Richard Vine, who will also the curator for the exhibit, the

acclaimed Indian poet Ashok Vajapeyji, NY architectural critic Iair

Rosenkranz, architectural prof. Livio G. Dimitru, Romanian poet

Doina Uregrau, Italian photographer Sebastioan Cortes, Icelandic

philosopher Jón Proppé , antrhopologist dr. K.K: Chakravarti

former chairman LK Academy and the Texan artist and Blue

Star´s former museum executive director, Bill Fitzgibbons as well

as Henry Meyric Huges, Honorary president of the International

Association of Art Critics.

As a practicing artist and architect Gudjon, has over the years

received e.g. the following grants, awards and recognitions: Cité

Internationale des Arts, France; Italian Ministry of Culture; The

Finnish-Icelandic Society; The American Information Service,

Iceland; The Icelandic Ministry of Culture; The Icelandic Artists’

Fund; The Sasakawa Foundation, Japan (two times); The Fulbright

Foundation, Iceland; The National Research Fund, Iceland; The

Scandinavian-American Foundation (travel grant), New York;

Nordisk Kunstcentrum, Finland; Sleipnir, The Nordic Ministerial

Fund, Denmark; SPRON - Cultural Fund, Iceland; The Municipal

Cultural Fund, Iceland; ILS Technological Advance Fund; Margret

Björgólfsdottir Cultural Fund; Muggur Travel Fund; Muggur

Resident Fund; CIA -Center For Icelandic Arts project grant;

Myndstef project grant; The National Endowment for the Arts,

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USA. In 2015 he received a honorable mention for creative

achievements jointly from Sumitra Mahajan, the speaker of

Lokh Sabha/Indian Parliament and The Indo-Icelandic Business

Association (IIBA), New Delhi.

He received an honorary two-year artist stipend from the Icelandic

government in 1999 and six months stipend in 2008 and 2010 as

well as a State travel grants several times. He has also received

several Icelandic and Italian architectural awards besides his

recent awards in India for his interior design, individual buildings

and urban planning and architectural nominations such as the

Icelandic DV cultural award several times.

Articles and interviews on Gudjon´s art, architecture and urban

views have appeared in The Times of India, Hindustan, The Indian

Express, The Hindu, The Telegraph and Shillong Times as well as

numeriously in Icelandic newspapers and other media e.g. as

in State Radio (RUV-2016) and TV (Mannamál, Hringbraut TV-

2016).

Essyas on Gudjon´s work have also apperared in international

professional magazines such as Art In America, NU, Inside Out ,

Decoration Internationelle and Livingetc.

Gudjon was appointed a cultural advisor in 2013-2015 to

INTACH for the cultural and architectural enhancement for the

municipality of Pondicherry, India.

In the fall of 2017 Gudjon was re-elected on the governing board

of The Indo-Icelandic Business Association (IIBA), New-Delhi.

In 2016 Gudjon was one of the leading founders of the Icelandic-

Pondicherry Friendship Society (VIP) where he acts as a special

cultural advisor.

Gudjon is presently active in establishing an art and design

residency in Southwest-Iceland along with a international

sculpture park.

Nordic prize literature recipient author Thor Vilhjálmsson, wrote

a poem dedicated to Gudjon in 2006, published by Reykjavik Art

Museum. The poem “The Steel Ganesh”, a dedication to Gudjon

and his work is part of the book “The Glass House” a selection

of a poems by the distinguished poet, Doina Uregrau, published

by the American Library of Congress, 2015.

Furthermore, Gudjon´s character appears as a real persona

in the otherwise all fictional novel “SoHo Sins” by Richard

Vine, published in New York, 2016 by Hard Crime Books/Titan

publishers. Two anecdotes on Gudjon are to be found in the

collection “The Modern Movement: Pentimenti and other

Tectonic Fables” by Prof. Livio G. Dimitriu, published in 2017 by

the USA Institute, New York.

259

Authors’ Profiles

Rajeev Sethi is a noted Indian designer, scenovgrapher and art curator. He is known for his outstanding designs across the world. Sethi spent his formative

years in Paris, where he first went to study graphic art on a scholarship. Thereafter he trained under painter and printmaker Stanley William Hayter at his

studio, Atelier 17. He was mentored by American designers Ray and Charles Eames. Finally he got a chance to work at studio of French designer, Pierre Cardin.

Meanwhile in 1960, he designed Delhi's first discotheque, Cellar at Regal Building, Connaught Place. He is curator and founder-chairman of the Asian Heritage

Foundation. He designed The Art Walk at the brand new T2 terminal in Mumbai. He is also part of INTACH constituted the first Governing Council. In 1986, he

was awarded the Padma Bhushan, India's third highest civilian award, given by the Government of India.

Richard Vine is the senior editor of Art in America magazine. He holds a PH.D in literature from the University of Chicago and has served as editor-in-chief

of the Chicago Review and of Dialogue: An Art Journal. He has taught as the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, the American Conservatory of Music, the

University of Riyadh in Saudi Arabia, the New School for Social Research, and New York University. His articles have appeared in various journals, including

Samagudi, the Georgia Review, Tema Celeste, Modern Poetry Studies, and the New Criterion, and numerous art catalogues and critical compendiums. In 2013

he curated the exhibit “Darkness Visible”; a group exhibit of 10 Chinese and American artists, at the National Art Museum of China, Beijing. He is the author

of NEW CHINA, NEW ART, featuring some 150 established and emerging Chinese artist, published by Prestel. Richard is the exhibition curator and main writer

for the travelling multi-media and publication exhibition project “GOlden SectiOns - the global work of Gudjon Bjarnason” launched at Lalit Kala Akademi – The

National Academy of Art in New Delhi, India. Richard is the author of the criminal novel “SoHo Sins” published in 2016 by Hard Crime Books/Titan publishers.

Henry Meyric Hughes is a freelance curator, consultant and writer on art. He is General Co-ordinator of Council of Europe Exhibitions and Honorary President of

the International Association of Art Critics (AICA), Paris. He was a co-founder of the European Biennial of Contemporary Art (2003), Manifesta, and President of

the Manifesta Foundation, Amsterdam, from 1996-2007. He worked for the British Council in Germany, Peru, France and Italy, and was the Director of Visiting

Arts (1994-96) and Director of Visual Arts (1986-92). He was the British Commissioner for the Venice Biennale and the São Paulo Bienal, 1986-92 (Richard

Hamilton, Tony Cragg, Anish Kapoor). He was the Director of the Hayward Gallery, including National Touring Exhibitions and the Arts Council Collection, from

1992-96. Exhibitions include Art and Power: ‘Europe under the Dictators 1930-1945’, ‘The Spirit of Romanticism in German Art’, 1790-1990 and the British

Art Show 4. His recent projects include 'Blast to Freeze: British Art in the Twentieth Century' for Wolfsburg and Toulouse (2002-03); the Cypriot Pavilion (Nikos

Charalambidis) at the 2003 Venice Biennale; a touring exhibition of contemporary art in Norway for Oslo (2005-06); and ‘No Borders, Just N.E.W.S.’, a touring

exhibition of young European artists, 2008. He is currently co-curating the XXX Council of Europe exhibition, ‘Critique and Crisis: Art in Europe since 1945’ for Berlin, Cracow,

Tallinn and Milan (2012-2013). Recent publications include ‘AICA in the Age of Globalisation’ (AICA Press, 2010) and ‘African Contemporary Art: Critical Concerns / Art

Contemporain Africain: Regards Critiques’ (AICA Press, 2011, co-ed.). Henry has been an adviser to UNESCO and the Council of Europe and is a Board member of Dox Centre

for Contemporary Art, Prague, the Archives del la critique d’art, Rennes, Arnolfini, Bristol and Matts, London. He was appointed Officer des Arts et des Lettres by the French

Government in 1997 and awarded the Cross of Merit (Bundesverdienstkreuz) by the President of the Federal Republic of Germany in 2002.

Ashok Vajpeyi is an Indian poet in Hindi, essayist, literary-cultural critic, apart from being a noted cultural and arts administrator, and a former civil servant.

He remained the chairman, Lalit Kala Akademi India’s National Academy of Arts, Ministry of Culture, Goverment of India, 2008–2011. He has published

over 23 books of poetry, criticism and art, and was awarded the Sahitya Akademi Award given by Sahitya Akademi, India’s National Academy of Letters, in

1994 for his poetry collection, Kahin Nahin Wahin. His notable poetry collections include, Shaher Ab Bhi Sambhavana Hai (1966), Tatpurush (1986), Bahuri

Akela (1992), Ibarat Se Giri Matrayen, Ummeed ka Doosra Naam (2004) and Vivaksha (2006), besides this he has also published works on literary and art

criticism: Filhal, Kuchh Poorvagrah, Samay se Bahar, Kavita ka Galp and Sidhiyan Shuru ho Gayi Hain. He is generally seen as part of the old Delhi-centric

literary-cultural establishment consisting of bureaucrat-poets and academicians like Sitakanta Mahapatra, Keki Daruwalla, J.P.Das, Gopi Chand Narang, Indra

Nath Choudhari and K. Satchidanandan.

260

Bill FitzGibbons received his BFA in Sculpture and Art History from the University of Tennessee, and his MFA in Sculpture and Multi-Media from Washington

University in St. Louis. Bill has received over thirty public art commissions in five countries. In 1979 he became the first curator at Laumeier Sculpture Park in

St. Louis, Missouri. From 1985 until 1988 he was appointed as the Director of Sculpture at the Visual Art Center in Anchorage, Alaska. In 1988 he became the

Department Head of Sculpture at the San Antonio Art Institute. In 1991 he was selected as a Fulbright Scholar for the Hungarian Art Academy in Budapest,

Hungary. Bill has also been on the adjunct faculty at Trinity University in San Antonio. FitzGibbons is the former Executive Director of Blue Star Contemporary

Art Museum 2002-2013 and in 2012, was selected by the Texas State Legislature as The Texas State Artist (sculpture).

Dr. Doina Uricariu is an acclaimed poet and the director of the Romanian Cultural Institute in New York. She has published nine volumes of poetry, four of

prose, three of criticism and esthetics since 1976, and an anthology of the entire oeuvre until 1998. Her volumes of poetry and prose received numerous

prestigious awards in Romania and abroad, have been translated and published in twenty one languages, including the volume Das Hertzinstitut in German,

launched recently at the Frankfurt International Book Fair. Mrs. Uricariu published numerous studies of literary criticism, and Nichita Stanescu: Paradoxical

Lyricism, Apocrypha about Emil Botta, Ecorches, critical studies about Emil Botta, Dominic Stanca, and Jeni Acterian. She is founding president of the publishing

consortium Du Style/Universalia Group since 1990. Dr. Uricariu’s cultural contributions earned her the titles of Knight of the Romanian Republic and Knight of

the Royal House of Romania. Currently, she is preparing a first volume of new poetry in English, scheduled for winter 2015.

Dr. K.K. Chakravarty (M.P.A. in Public Administration and Ph. D. in Fine Arts, Harvard) is the Chairman of Lalit Kala-the National Academy of Art. He is a

distinguished scholar in the field of Education, Cultural Studies, Heritage and Museum Administration, Art and Archeology, and has held charges of Managing

Director, Text Book Corporation, Chairman, Board of Secondary Education, Chairman, Professional Entrance Examination Board, Director, Public Instruction in

the Government of Madhya Pradesh, and Additional Chief Secretary for University, School, Technical Education and Science and Technology in the Government

of Chhattisgarh. He developed programmes for building bridges between education and culture, in the capacity of Commissioner, Archaeology, Museums,

Tourism and Culture, Govt. of Madhya Pradesh, at Bhopal, Director, Indira Gandhi Rashtriya Manav Sangrahalaya (National Museum of Man), Bhopal, Director

General, National Museum, Delhi and Member Secretary, Indira Gandhi Rashtriya Kala Kendra (National Centre for Arts), Delhi in the Ministries of Human

Resource Development, Tourism and Culture, Government of India. Apart from being Chancellor NUEPA, he is Chairman, National Screening and Evaluation Committee,

Ministry of Culture, Govt. of India, for exhibitions sent abroad, Vice Chairman of the Delhi Institute of Heritage Research and Management and Advisor Art, Culture and

Language, Govt. of Delhi. He is also Chairman, Bhasha Trust at Vadodara, Member, Governing Boards of several central and state universities and Advisor to several state

governments and national cultural institutions. He is a member of the International Advisory Board, the Continuum Advances in Semiotics Series, London and New York.

Has been member of the Editorial Boards, Journal of the Australian Rock Art Research Association, and UNESCO Journal on Intangible Heritage, Seoul. Extensively published

on Art and Architecture, Rock Art, Anthropology, Archaeology, Museology, Conservation, Education and Indology with a focus on issues of marginalization and bio cultural

survival of communities. Has organized and participated in International Conferences and Exhibitions in these areas and has led a movement on national and international

platforms for regeneration of community habitats, knowledge systems, heritage, arts and re invention of colonial cognitive categories. Recent volumes edited or co edited

by him on issues of Indigeneity and Survival of Indigenous Languages and Cultures have been published by Orient Blackswan, and Routledge.

Photo Credit: Doina Uricariu’s Photo Portrait: Deniz SAYLAN, Photographer, London/Stuttgart

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The documentary film - “DySTOPic ProgressiONs”

by Walley Films

Walley Films, Angela and Mark Walley are the makers “DySTOPic ProgressiONs” a seven minute long documentary film on the execution of Gudjon’s

exploded sculptural work with USA military and creative collaborators for the production of “Six mINutes of SeparatiONs”, an art video which accompanies

the GOlden SectiONs – the global works of Gudjon Bjarnason multi-media exhibition and publication project. The Walley’s have produced over forty

short documentary films following contemporary artists and non-profit art organizations in Texas. Their independent production studio, Walley Films,

is based in San Antonio, Texas. Learn more about their work at www.WalleyFilms.com.

Interviews

by Mridula Sharma

Mridula Sharma is a senior design writer who has edited and worked with Livingetc, Inside Outside, Design Today and Better Homes and Gardens. In

her long career, following a Masters Degree in Magazine Journalism, she has been associated with the launch of several design magazines. Mridula is

among the few writers of longest standing on interior and architecture design in the country. Widely travelled, she has, over the years been editing

international trends for the Indian market. Her area of recent interest includes mapping the connection between anthropology and design, and

discovering historical design references. Mridula Sharma’s recent book on timber designs ‘Amazing Timber Resorts by architect N. Mahesh’ was

recently launched. She is currently working on two design books besides forecasting for companies, freelance writing and consulting.

262

Special Acknowledgements & Gratitude

from Gudjon Bjarnason/GB-AAA to the following:

Main editor & curator: Richard Vine.

Co-curators: Jón Proppé & Henry Meyric Hughes.

Graphic design consultation: Brynja Baldursdóttir.

Contributing authors: Rajeev Sethi, Dr. Richard Vine, Henry Meyric Hughes, Ashok Vajpeyi, Bill FitzGibbons, Raúl Zamudio, Jón Proppé,

Sebastian Cortes, Doina Uricariu, Dr. Livio Dimitriu, Iair Rosenkranz, Carlos Zapata, Dr. K.K. Chakravarty & Mridula Sharma.

GB-AAA personnel: Amudhan C., Divya Krishna Kumar, G. Raja Rajan, Krishna Shastri, Nachiketa Mohanta, Phakhan Basumatary, Rajdetta

Dewang, R. Thiruniraiselvan, Mohammed Umar Sharief & Sivasankari T., Girija G. & Rites Bera.

DySTOPic ProgressiONs documentary film makers: Angela & Mark Walley.

GOlden SectiONs documentary film maker: Rakhi Thakur.

Support & encouragement: Anubhav Nath, Andrew Pollock, Annete Priyadarshini, Bjarni Guðjónsson, Bjarni Sigurbjörnsson, Biswa Rout,

Aðalsteinn Snorrason, Björn Guðbrandsson, Captain L.S. Bahl, Chakaia Booker, Chhaya Bhanti, Dalip Dua, Devanshi Agarlwal, Divya Krishna

Kumar, Deepika Sachdev, Dísa Guðmundsdóttir, Egill Guðmundsson, Erla Þórarinsdóttir, Friðbjörn R. Sigurðsson, Gayatri Tandon, Geeti Bhagat,

George Schroder, Gígja Ísis Guðjónsdóttir, Guðmundur Eiríksson, Guðmundur Þór Þórmóðsson, Keva J. Sigurðardóttir, Hafdís Vilhjálmsdóttir,

Haukur Ólafsson, Hjalti Steinþórsson, Jose Alfano, Jón Gunnlaugsson, Jón Þ. Bjarnason, Manjit Bhullar, Naresh K. Pande, Neha Kripaal, Peter

Nagi, Pooja Verma, Priya Vashisht, Qiu Sunny Xiaokun, Raul Mitra, Rahul Chongtham, Rajesh Shina, Rakhi Thakur, Ravi Gossein, Roopa Shetty,

Valborg Snævarr, Vera Sölvadóttir, Vikram Soni, Vijay Bhatia, Wid Chapman, Þorgeir Ólafsson, Þórir Ibsen & Örnólfur Árnason.

264

GUDJON BJARNASON

Visual artist, sculptor & architect

Photo credit: Doris Day and Night

266

All art and visual images, drawings, texts, concepts, specifications,

renderings, documents etc, etc, contained in this book are the sole

intellectual private property of Gudjon Bjarnason/GB-AAA.

They shall not be used by any person, company or project whatsoever

without a previously acquired permission followed by mutually

signed agreement.

270

GUDJON BJARNASON - ART & ARCHITECTURE ATELIERS

IslANDs - Painterly Experiments & Exploded Sculptures

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