Abattoir is pleased to introduce a new body of work by Hildur Jónsson, her first show in Cleveland following the artist’s museum exhibition at the Frederick R. Weisman Museum of Art, Pepperdine University (traveled to the Bechtler Museum of Modern Art) in 2024.
The sequence of new textile paintings reflects Jónsson’s studies of recent geological events in Iceland. Lava fields and tundras are recurring motifs in work of the Icelandic and Cleveland-based artist. Notably, in this show, Jónsson achieves a sustained investigation of atmospheric phenomena through closely valued color relationships that envelope the gallery environment in a minimalist effect that might be compared to other art forms such as the music of composer Steve Reich. As Jónsson’s work has continually hovered between landscape and abstraction, she follows in the footsteps of many of the 20th century’s leading abstract artists. From Helen Frankenthaler’s stained paintings to Alfred Stieglitz’s photographic Equivalents series, Jónsson looks to natural phenomena as pictorial source and inspiration for a private expression of wonder and spiritual form in nature.
As the artist writes about this work, “The Lava Fields works in this exhibition is influenced by the recent eruption near my home in Iceland. The sky in some of the pieces these pieces is filled with polar stratospheric clouds. The Tundra series is from my travels to Melrakkaslétta, a vast tundra in the north-eastern most part of Iceland. Completely desolate, flat land and endless sky.”
