IslANDs - Compressed Realities - Exploded Photoworks

GOlden IslANDs

GOlden IslANDs

- The global works of Gudjon Bjarnason

- The global works of Gudjon Bjarnason

COMPRESSED REALITIES-EXPLODED PHOTOWORKS

MAIN CURATOR RICHARD VINE

MAIN CURATOR RICHARD VINE

CO-CURATORS JÓN PROPPÉ

CO-CURATORS

HENRY MEYRIC

JÓN

HUGHES

PROPPĖ

HENRY MEYRIC HUGHES

5

GUDJON BJARNASON - ART & ARCHITECTURE ATELIERS

“You don’t take a photograph. You make it”.

-Ansel Adams

Index

1. Icelandic Drift into the Indian Ocean-A Prologue by Rajeev Sethi 08

2. The Lazarus Effect: On Gudjon’s photography by Raúl Zamudio 10

3. Photoworks 13

4. The Changing Photographic Work of Guðjón Bjarnason by Jón Proppé 50

5. Poem by Ashok Vajpeyi 51

6. A Viking in Pondicherry by Sebastian Cortes 96

7. Skies, Clouds & Heavens 99

8. LandSCapeS series 111

9. Epilogue by Dr.K.K Chakravarty 204

10. Interview with Gudjon Bjarnason by Mridula Sharma 206

11. Profile 211

12. Authors’ Profiles 216

13. Special Acknowledgements & Gratitude 220

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.

8

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,

9

The Lazarus Effect: On Gudjon’s photography

by Raúl Zamudio

Photography in the hands of Gudjon Bjarnason is not unlike

his other work in various media. Bjarnason’s exploding

sculptures, for example, are three-dimensional yet the way

he achieves their various configurations comes by way of

acute precision as well as a chance operation associated

with John Cage. Yet their sustained elegance nonetheless

reveals a sophisticated métier. There is also a paradoxical

thematic purview in their ostensible shape shifting; for

their materialization ontologically culminates somewhere

between pure abstraction and more recognizable forms that

poetically impact the viewer like a Rorschach stain. That is,

Bjarnason’s sculptures are as much seductively visual and

aestheticized as they are embodied with meaning, however

puzzling they may seem. To a greater or lesser degree, this is

very much intrinsic to Bjarnason’s photographic practice as

well.

Bjarnason’s photographs have an expansive formal vocabulary

that evinces an artistic intelligence and deep understanding of

photography’s historicity. Although his photographic corpus

to date is generally in black and white, the absence of color is

enigmatically expansive in its limitations while aesthetically

alluding to the past and reflective of the present. His

photographic palette, if you will, is tangentially reminiscent

of sepia tone prints and even earlier to the Daguerreotype.

Because their digitization is equally foregrounded, they are

also at the forefront of how photography can be made anew

given that its technical possibilities have been seemingly

exhausted. The conundrum is not unlike the discussions of

painting’s demise in the 1980s.

Bjarnason resuscitates photography in the many ways his

pictures are formally and conceptually articulated. Largely

steadfast in their size and format, he masterfully incorporates

different photographic and visual tropes for varied effect. In a

work titled Elephants: Art, Rat, Tar, Tra, Atr (2014), for instance,

Bjarnason combines 42 small photographs of elephants into

a unified grid. The images are shot from many different

angles and their idiosyncratic perspectives recall Rodchenko,

while cohering into a grid they are not unlike the work of

Bernd and Hilla Becher as well as quotidian forms of visual

culture including postcards, National Geographic exposé,

and pedagogical ephemera. Apart from the inherent power

of the constellation of imagery, the subtitle underscores a

semiotic dimension in that the individual images morph

into a kind of language, as they become counterpart to the

variations of the word art. The serialism that structures the

work as a whole is also foundational in other pictures of

fauna including dogs, but also in other works that explore

flora as well but also those that capture individual humans.

10

The paradox of these typologies is that they concomitantly

draw attention to singularities as to the images as gestalt.

Regarding the landscapes, Bjarnason presents both the

trees and the forest. This modus operandi draws attention

to the overlooked, and regarding the latter to a world that

exudes beauty and mystery and because of their black and

white color scheme, it is also a universe that borders on the

ominous.

The repetition of images function inversely to Andy Warhol’s

emptying of pictorial meaning integral to his paintings: In

Warhol’s Marilynn Diptych (1962), for example, the icon’s

power is neutered via its faded and subsequent jaded

presence; the opposite occurs in Bjarnason’s serialism, for his

images are visually heightened via their multiplicity. However,

in certain instances there seems to be an interesting nonrepresentational

turn in his geographical renderings that

point to another way that these pictures can be understood.

Like his sculptures that are a confluence of both the purely

abstract and something else, the gridded landscapes as

well as the works based on celestial vistas are more than

studies of geographies or the stratosphere, for example. In

one sense, they have an affinity with the landscape tradition

of Caspar David Friedrich; specifically, the nineteenthcentury

German Romantic painter’s depictions of paintings

evocative of religiosity and mortality. Finitude for David as

well as Bjarnason, however, is not existential death or the

foreclosure of transcendence; rather, Bjarnason’s landscapes

are embodiments of sublimity, and his pictures of the heavens

are animistic renderings of humanity’s potential apotheosis.

This the conundrum of Bjarnason’s pictures as well as his art

in general: on the one hand they are imbued with beauty

and the aesthetic; on the other hand, they are explorations

of the human experience in all of its checkered glory. Gudjon

Bjarnason’s artistic and aesthetic acumen is a kind of Lazarus

effect; for his lush and visually poetic photographs make us

see anew what we have forgotten by way of animating the

inanimate.

11

Photoworks

Broken Elephant

2014, print on realistic photo paper

Size 67.4 x 109.0 cm

14

Broken Elephants


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

15

Unisoned ELephants


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

16

Elephants; Art, Rat, Tar, Tra, Atr


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

17

Immersed Elephants saturated


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

18

Twisted Souls entwINed


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

19

Entangled ReaITies observed


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

20

Dog observatONns BLACK & WHITE


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

21

FadINg CreATures Assembled


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

22

KIN observed


Size 67.4 x 109.0 cm

23

MEmories of The OtHER Half


Size 67.4 x 67.4 cm

24

White FLOWer with Elephants


Size 47.6 x 67.4cm

25

Black FLOWer of INnocence


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

26

Black FLOWer architecture


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

27

AcID FLOWers


Size 47.6 x 67.4cm

28

EmbryONic BegiINnINgs


Size 47.6 x 67.4cm

29

Beware Birds, beware


Size 47.6 x 67.4cm

30

Quatrable architecture birth


Size 67.4 x 47.6 cm

31

Quadrable EXplosiON

2014, print on semi-gloss photo paper

Size 48,5 x 67,4cm

32

Art FloWEr Vertical Vertical


Size 47.6 x 47.6 cm

33

Fallen Trees saturATted Dark


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

34

White NegATive FLOWer.


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

35

Water Lilies, Water Lillies


Size 47.6 x 47.6 cm

36

WhATs there WATer Lilles?


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

37

Negative Water Lilly Gaze - for Monet


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

38

FadiINg WhITe FLOWer in Black


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

39

FLOWered VisiONs FadINg


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

40

After the Event


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

41

Fallen Trees saturATed DARK


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

42

The Art of Fallen Trees


Size 47.6x 67.4 cm

43

Fallen Trees in Vertical Mode


Size 67.4 x 67.4 cm

44

UnI’maginable fORrest….what!


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

45

Tree Crash (from Cyclone series)


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

46

Das Auto Embraced


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

47

REflectiONs on Car Three Crash (from Cyclone series)


Size 67.4 x 47.6 cm

48

Infinite Maps of discovery


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

49

The Changing Photographic Work of Guðjón Bjarnason

By Jón Proppé

In his work as a visual artist, Guðjón Bjarnason has primarily

exhibited paintings and sculptures, usually produced in series

where repetition and variation become part of the artist‘s

exploration of form, line and material.

The work has often been conceived on a large scale – large

series of paintings entirely covering a museum wall, welded

steel sculptures reshaped by dynamite – almost aggressively

encompassing in scope. For many years, however, these

exhibitions have been accompanied by photographic works

that originally were presented in smaller, humbler form.

Though less imposing, these have nonetheless represented

an important aspect of Guðjón’s overall project and may even

hold the key to understanding the artistic intention behind

his art.

What they document is the artist’s engagement with the

environment and in effect they chronicle the inspiration and

the process behind the creation of the larger sculptures and

series of paintings. In Iceland, they have often chronicled

Guðjón’s extensive travels through the barren highlands

and remote mountains of the country, his lens exploring the

rock-strewn landscape to pick out aesthetic qualities – the

textures, lines and shapes that we then see extrapolated and

reinterpreted in the larger pieces. What these photographs

reveal is that Guðjón’s art gets its energy and impact from

this exploration and engagement with the environment.

Since his move to India, his photographic work has changed

and grown in scale. It now attests to the artist’s engagement

with his new home, a landscape and culture vastly different

from the bleakly-lit and unpopulated highlands of Iceland.

These new works reveal how deeply Guðjón has delved

into this new environment, examining its visual impact and

rhetoric, and the feel of places teeming with people.

He now uses his old method of repetition and variation within

the photographic panels, while also employing the layering

that characterises his later paintings. The overall effect is in

part a highly personal, yet almost scientifically exhaustive,

rendering of India and the impact India has had on him and

his thinking.

Some of the images remain almost documentary in their

realism, despite often heavy manipulation, while others

dissolve entirely into abstraction, presenting flowing patterns,

jagged shapes and interlocking mazes that somehow, still,

carry the feeling of a new encounter, a newly explored

environment.

More than anything, they reveal the way Guðjón related

to his surroundings and his new home. They show a gaze

that is penetrating and analytic, yet playful and profoundly

respectful of everything it explores.

50

Poem

By Ashok Vajpeyi

Who knocks at the door?

not dreams or desires

nor hope or nightmares?

Words wait anxiously:

who from a far brings to us

these gifts, this magnificence?

It is cold and one yearn for warmth.

It is dark and one yearns for light.

It is silent and one awaits some sound.

The ice melts. The window opens.

There are footsteps on the stairs.

The birds have returned to the trees.

The flowers, after a long night,

are about to day-bloom.

Images are imprints of a restless interior.

Words cannot catch the glow, the turmoil.

And yet there is a knock on the door.

51

Beyond Luxury withIN


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

52

Nocturnal Luxuries


Size 67.4 x 67.4 cm

53

FadINg Luxuries

2014, print on synthetic canvas, ink, oil & acrylic paint

Size 296.6 x 480.5 cm

54

Flooded VisiONs


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

55

Mind VisiON blOWN


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

56

EXplosive Abundance


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

57

EXplosive Energies


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

58

Families of Strangers


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

59

DarkEND Abundance


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

60

EXplosive Transcendence

2014,print on realistic photo paper

Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

61

Faded Realities


Size 67.4 x 47.6 cm

62

Beyond Walls


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

63

Empty Messages EXposed


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

64

Visionary Architectural Messengers


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

65

Cons Vertical Pro


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

66

FoundaATiON City


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

67

Newborn Architectures


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

68

Explosive FoundATiON BE-INgs


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

69

SwirlINg ActsiONs, swirling


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

70

DancINg WAR TACTICS


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

71

Dark Castles revISited IT TRUE


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

72

Striped Domile Effacments


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

73

& beautiful delicate Art of Abundance


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

74

Darkened Abundance with FLOWers


Size 47.6 x 67.4cm

75

cONs Vertical MUNDI


76

Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

cONs VERTICALS


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

77

Mixed cONstructiONsON VERTICALS


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

78

ON Arts of ConSTRUCTIon


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

79

Overflooded Realities


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

80

Tales of OpposITes REFLECTS


Size 48,5 x 67,4cm

81

ART CONSTRUCTION VERTICALS


Size 67.4 x 67.4 cm

82

The Poetry DOdge CAPITALISM?

2014, print on gloss photo paper

Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

83

Do Captalist Elephants?


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

84

Heavenly Tracks


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

85

Destructive Poetries


Size 67.4 x 67.4 cm

86

Poetic HorizONtals packed


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

87

New New Beyonds


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

88

Raw Materials unexploded


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

89

Cyclone Fantasy saturated

2014, print on semi-gloss photo paper

Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

90

Lighthearted Dilemmas


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

91

Reflected Abundance


Size 48.5 x 67.4 cm

92

ART KOLKATA MOVING


Size 46.7 x 67.4 cm

93

Memories of BEing BE

2014, print on-realistic photo paper

Size 67.4 x 47.6 cm

94

Distant Echos


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

95

A Viking in Pondicherry

by Sebastian Cortes

Meeting Gudjon at a rooftop party in the heart of South

India was the start of an interesting journey. His Viking-like

features and his cowboy swagger, off set by a decidedly

unique and never trite conversation, added to his “original

persona”. Our initial topic of conversation was prompted

by my admiration for the Icelandic government’s courage

and resolve during the last financial disaster of 2008. His

response to my favorable comment made it clear to me that

he was not as impressed as I was and he proceeded to outline

in detail the many shortcomings. His critical analyses and

honest detailing of the facts was a refreshing change from

the superficial party chatting. He proceeded to charm me by

commenting favorably on my last book on Pondicherry and

to suggest that maybe he, as an architect/artist, interested in

conservation, could offer some support to my mini crusade to

bring new life to the many heritage and abandoned buildings

in Pondicherry.

The next time Gudjon and I hooked up, he presented me

with an exhaustive study of the abandoned distillery in

Pondicherry, a massive and potentially interesting structure,

which sits unattended and unused on one of the best

stretches of the Pondicherry coastline. I was not only taken

aback by his detailed effort, which gave rise to some very deep

discussions about heritage and architecture but I was also

pleasantly stunned by his forward looking energy – certainly

a residue of his New York years at Columbia – a very pleasant

change from the excessively laidback approach to the future

that reigns in South India.

Over the next couple of years Gudjon would dedicate time,

energy and many personal contacts to the endless initiatives

needed to awaken the slumber around the question of

Pondicherry’s heritage. Meetings with INTACH, where his

innovative and sometimes overly advanced restructuring

proposals caused a few eyes to roll, would always produce a

vibrant air of possibility but the mechanisms of politics and

interest seemed always to anchor the forward momentum,

leaving everything stuck in the doldrums of unfinished

business. Amazingly, Gudjon was never demotivated and

between trips around the world and other commissions,

he always found the time to check in on the Pondicherry

situation.

The results are yet to be seen and maybe years are still

needed for both of us to witness the heritage and cultural

revival that we both wish for Pondicherry but Gudjon’s efforts

and energy have certainly proved that his creative spirit,

which he celebrates in many ways, may also find a source of

confirmation in his concern for the future of the Indo-French

96

town that he now calls home. As a fellow artist, I can only

say that I wish more talented people like him would come

to this area and contaminate the air with artistic energy

and resources, which will galvanize sleepy Pondicherry.

97

Skies, Clouds & Heavens

99

RecONfigurated Clouds (from Clouds, Skies & Heavens series)


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

100

GOlden Sky Gaze (from Clouds, Skies & Heavens series)


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

101

BeyONd the beautiful (from Clouds & Heavens series)


Size 47.6 x 67.4cm

102

SaturATed BEautiful (from Clouds, Skies & Heavens series)


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

103

Faint, faint Memory Clouds (from Clouds, Skies & Heavens series)


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

104

From Earth, Cloud to Sky (from Clouds & Heavens series)


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

105

Hazy Skies (from Skies, Cloud & Heavens series)


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

106

Vague Sun Set (from Sunset series)


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

107

Dark End Infiniti Sky (from Skies, Clouds & Heavens series)


Size 47.6 x 67.4cm

108

Unatural Abundance - checkmate for Reinhardt


Size 47.6 x 67.4cm

109

LandSCapeS series

VaINs of BE-Ing (from Satellite series)


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

112

WithIN the Interiour FLOW (from Satellite series)


Size 67.4 x 47.6 cm

113

GOlden Vibrancies (from Satellite series)


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

114

DescENDing Vibrancies Down


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

115

LAndSCapes-The Rock that is, that is (from HorizON series)


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

116

Kjölur RE:visited (from HorizON series)


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

117

FadINg Journies (from HorizON series)


Size 67.4 x 67.4 cm

118

Land LandSCapeS-VisiON Flash (from HorizON series)


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

119

LandSCapeS & HuntiNg HorizONs (from HorizON series)


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

120

Darkened VisiONs (from Silhouette series)


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

121

That GOlden MoMEnt (from Rock series)


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

122

CacaphONy Rock VisiONs (from Rock series)


Size 46.7 x 67.4 cm

123

FadINg Rocks, fadiINg Rocks-ad infintum (from HorizON series)


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

124

Day & Night EXploded DOors-for Duchamp


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

125

Hunted Lake reflected hoch! (from LandScapes Series)


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

126

lINe EXplosiON (from Explosions series)


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

127

Darkened EXplosion Manifest (from Explosion series)


Size 67.4 x 47.6 cm

128

Raw Materials (from Metal series)


Size 47.6 x 67.4cm

129

EX Crossed EXplosion (from Explosion series)


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

130

Crossed EXplosion Chiarscuro (from Explosion series)


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

131

Exploding situation


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

132

Floating glaciers receding


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

133

Beyond power


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

134

Homecoming-homegoing


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

135

Merging darkness


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

136

Merging darkness on a tilted horizon


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

137

After the befores

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

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

138

Monsoon skies-unknown journey


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

139

Presences


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

140

Swirl


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

141

In the desert


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

142

Mushroom tree


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

143

History lost


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

144

History obliterated by its own making


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

145

Obliterations


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

146

Obliteration II


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

147

After the storm-diptych tragedy


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

148

Memory textures


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

149

Happy skulls


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

150

Karma pigeons


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

151

Sweet horizons


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

152

Journies


Size 67.4 x 47.6 cm

153

Matters of the heart


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

154

Sky explosions amalgated


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

155

Sky explosions


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

156

Sky explosions II


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

157

Sky explosions III


Size 67.4 x 47.6 cm

158

Sky explosions IV


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

159

Sky explosions V


Size 67.4 x 47.6 cm

160

Sky explosions VI


Size 109.0 x 109.0 cm

161

Spiritual saturation


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

162

Spiritual saturation II


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

163

Spiritual saturation III


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

164

Flowering obsession


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

165

Water lillies


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

166

Artificial beauties


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

167

Connecting the tribes


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

168

Expanding territories overlaid


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

169

Expanding territories overlaid II


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

170

Quantum search


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

171

Beyond sadness


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

172

Beyond sadness II


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

173

Beyond sadness III


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

174

Beyond sadness IV


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

175

Darkness achieved


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

176

Endless massacres


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

177

Elephant rides contemplated

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

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

178

Elephant rides


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

179

Elephant rides II


Size 47.6 x 67.4 cm

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Tiger hunt overlaid


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Tiger hunt overlaid II


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In the realm


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Blackened containers


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Landscape rift


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Old Men


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The flags of our mothers


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Deca dIS dIS


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AbstrACT InsertiONs


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AbstrACT InsertiONs II


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AbstrACT InsertiONs II


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Abstract Insertions III


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Abstract Insertions IV


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Fleeting Moments


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Abstract Spur


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Formations in Black


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Metamorphis in Making


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On the Edge


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Fluid Landscapes


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Million Roses


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Violent Tranquility


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Dried Riverbeds


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Next of Kin


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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

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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.

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 matter. 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. 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”:

Who

Are You

Who is born

In the next room

So loud to my won

That I can hear the womb

Opening and the dark roam

Over the short and the dropped son

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Interview with Gudjon Bjarnason

by Mridula Sharma

As a man of diverse experiences and a broad academic

background your work relies on the interplay between

seeming opposites, structure and the void, or possibly control

and chaos. Can you speak to the symbiotic relationship

between these forces and their active conceptualization in

your work?

My multimedia art projects, be it photography, painting,

sculpture or architecture, etc. work very much with the

dialectics of contradiction, unresolved tension and turbulent,

confrontational states of being in terms of psychology and

opposing forces. The interplay and often violent collision

of chaos and order, light and dark, being and nothingness,

individual free will and the oppressions of mass society are

the pivot points of my activity. My structures and “negative”

images that fuse and integrate abstraction and the real and

aim at stretching standard recognized limits and methods of

creation far beyond the norm in an attempt to create a metalanguage

of higher synthesis. A sort of a stoic stance in the face

of conflict, groundlessness and rapid uncontrollability which

characterizes very much our cultural, social and political life

in contemporary times.

Despite, the dark “negative” undertone I view my work

as a very positive contribution to our cultural debate and

decision making – my aim is to accept the disintegration of

our fiber and spatial fabric and introduce grace and creative

novelty into that realm through acceptance rather than

the avoidance and blind eyes of our troubled states. In a

certain way, I find it the task and historical responsibility of

the creative herd, be it artist or architects, etc. to objectify

and abstractly symbolize our human condition through our

subjective imagination which of course is something of an

oxymoron. But of course art-making allows this kind of play

to take place within its limitless logic and set of rules which is

of course quite wonderful.

I’m in favor of many things: the merging of opposites, non

exclusional thinking, frozen movements of extreme motions,

irreconcilable contradictions, unresolved transformations

and end game materializations. Explosions have become

a way for me to open up stagnant modes of being and

thinking both literally and figuratively. The explosion of

precisely ordered geometric steel profiles, often set up in

orderly fashion opens up figuratively the formerly stale

and meaningless and inactive voids within by exposing the

interior of the transformed object. Thus the thing, which

then gets “dethinged” or animated opens up a world of new

association which I believe very much to be the function of

art and architecture through its structure, concept and figural

outline.

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The placement of disfigured objects in painterly field,

reverted negatively colored digital photographic images or

the neutral field of the gallery or open natural space both

of which I look upon as a blank space, tabula rasa, with the

sculpture debris forming 3d drawings in confined or free

space. “Dethinged” buildings – that is buildings which in

their making posthumously bypass their use and program –

can do the same with the same effect. The interplay of solid

and void, presence and absence can have many levels, the

gap between my sculptures whose voids have been opened

up is very important – as important as the disfigured objects

themselves. Thingness and nothingness, reality and play aim

at a high level of abstraction beyond ordinary prescriptions.

Mirrored fusions, endless reflections, radiating blacks,

bursting whites, materialized diagrams.

I think it was Wilhelm Reich who said that the modern man

was stuck in between the fascism of the everyday and his

higher ideals and Scott Fitzgeralds mentioned that it was

the ability of the sound mind to have two opposite thought

and still function. This I like – along with a good oration of

oppositions and contradictions for breakfast.

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sELF pORtrait OR


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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.

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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.

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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

and Decoration Internationelle.

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.

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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.

216

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.

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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.

220

GUDJON BJARNASON

Visual artist, sculptor & architect

Photo credit: Deniz Saylan

221

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.

GUDJON BJARNASON - ART & ARCHITECTURE ATELIERS

IslANDs - Compressed Realities - Exploded Photoworks

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