IslANDs - Painterly Experiments & Exploded Sculptures

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