__excerpt from interview with Icelandic conceptual artist HREINN FRIDFINNSSON
MF: You produced a small, lovely bagatelle in 1990, Sol diaze. Having spent a number of years crafting big works that are inherently logical, this piece seems to signal a return to poetry. In fact, you created other bagatelles during the 1980s and each one seems to give voice to your intuitive self.
HF: These small things are rather spontaneous, at least they were in this period. I always did them in between as a sort of consolation.
MF: Respites from duty.
HF: Yes. They helped loosen up and relax this whole process. They're little exercises. With some of them I had the feeling, now this is a little bit too easy. When it goes too far, it's like creating a pictorial; what you have then is nothing more than a nice composition. Like improvisation, you have to hit the mark. Either the work survives or it dies instantly, which is of course quite good; you are not bothered by the ones that don't make it.
__published in the catalogue raisonné, Hreinne Fridfinnsson (Reykjavík: Mál og menning, 1993), on the occasion of retrospective co-curated by the ICA Institute, Amsterdam, and Listasafin Íslands (National Gallery of Iceland), Reykjavík[/red]
Meghan FerrillMF: You produced a small, lovely bagatelle in 1990, Sol diaze. Having spent a number of years crafting big works that are inherently logical, this piece seems to signal a return to poetry. In fact, you created other bagatelles during the 1980s and each one seems to give voice to your intuitive self.
HF: These small things are rather spontaneous, at least they were in this period. I always did them in between as a sort of consolation.
MF: Respites from duty.
HF: Yes. They helped loosen up and relax this whole process. They're little exercises. With some of them I had the feeling, now this is a little bit too easy. When it goes too far, it's like creating a pictorial; what you have then is nothing more than a nice composition. Like improvisation, you have to hit the mark. Either the work survives or it dies instantly, which is of course quite good; you are not bothered by the ones that don't make it.
__published in the catalogue raisonné, Hreinne Fridfinnsson (Reykjavík: Mál og menning, 1993), on the occasion of retrospective co-curated by the ICA Institute, Amsterdam, and Listasafin Íslands (National Gallery of Iceland), Reykjavík[/red]