Reloading – Dream I
In most recent work by Eygló Harðardóttir, in Gallery Underpass, words like rhythm, pulse, pause and repeat connect us to and imply certain action. These words, and actions, reference both the process used in making the work and also the sitespecific location we view it in.
Gallery Underpass is more readily known as its name suggests; an underpass or corridor, that is the connection point and space between the back and forth movement of street transit and the static destination of a parking lot. A drive-through or passageway where the energy is often loud or pulsing, and a location where frequent movement is marked with crosses of foot and car traffic.
The work Reloading – Dream I is a series of paintings that make up one installation in which Eygló cut down a length of building paper and painted repeated strokes of color in a unform arrangement. Action painting is at play here in the brushstrokes that are a response to a certain temporary physical immobility and the restricted movement that resulted. Limited in her mobility, the shape of the brushstrokes were in one way an act of self-rehabilitation for Eygló. Painted on the ground, the artists body was the tool through which a certain process arrives at a certain destination. Hung here, and read in landscape format, the strokes tear through the natural horizon line and are punctuated by calculated dots that reinforce and draw attention to the movement and change over time present in the work.
As choreographed drawings they connect to the movement taking place in the underpass and direct us to notice different moments or reminders of these repeated actions. The colors: steel, mica black, fluorescent, phthalo green – specifically selected for the location – occur in three sets of six colors, and were selected based on their relation to one another and their availability. In their arrangement they resonate with one another, call upon the next and break up the monochromatic environment here. The large dots contrast the regular strokes and reinforce the pause. They mark the paper in short pulses, poem stanzas or notations, and could be linked to roll-paper caps used in ones hand or for toy guns.
As is common within Eygló´s work, the materials were sourced from the studio and from what was at hand. They are presented as they are in that paper gets to be paper with its folds and creases, paint is applied without pre-mixing specific colors. In turn they are immediate and glow in this outdoor public location. Assembled here in the underpass, where both foot and vehicle traffic take place, they might direct us to see the space anew and symbolically draw more attention to the drive-through view.
Text by Becky Forsythe