BERLIN.- Persons Projects presents Kristján Guðmundsson’s exhibition during this year’s Gallery Weekend in Berlin. He is one of the most important conceptual artists to emerge from Iceland. His involvement with the SÚM movement (1965-78) challenged the traditional Icelandic interpretation of art as being solely rooted in landscape painting and nature. Influenced by international artists such as Donald Judd, Richard Long, and Dieter Roth, Guðmundsson in turn questioned throughout his career what constitutes art by upending our assumptions of what it is. His minimal sculptures and wall compositions over the past six decades are composed of a wide range of materials, including graphite blocks, pencil leads, water levels, paper rolls, aluminum-framed window panes, and plastic logos.

The exhibition Mostly Drawings extends his poetic exploration of the tension that exists between something and nothing. It aligns older works with newly created pieces that reexamine his minimal approach in the way he plays with and defines space using the minimum amount of materials. This presentation continues his lifelong fascination with the medium of drawing, meticulously reducing the emotional expressiveness of each piece by focusing his attention on the precise nature of the materials used.

Guðmundsson’s work reflects his minimal aesthetic philosophy, resonating with an understated sense of poetry, humor, and pragmatism. This is most evident in his ‘potential drawings,’ which combine graphite rods with paper rolls, reducing the concept of the drawing to its essential components. These basic drawing materials retain their purest form, untouched and unaltered, hinting at the dormant potential of an infinite amount of undrawn drawings embedded within. Complementing these abstract drawings, Guðmundsson’s graphite typographical symbols—set in the iconic Helvetica font and including hashtags, exclamation marks, and other signs encountered in everyday communication—become the raw material he uses to redefine his visual language. He first began making these works in 2007, in celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the Helvetica typeface.

Born in 1941 in Snæfellsnes, Iceland, Kristján Guðmundsson lives and works in Reykjavik. He has exhibited throughout Europe and the United States, with exhibitions at Scandinavian House (New York, USA), Rappaz Museum (Basel, Switzerland), Haus der Kunst (Munich, Germany), MOCA (Los Angeles, USA), Quint Contemporary Art (La Jolla, USA), National Gallery of Iceland (Reykjavik, Iceland), the Reykjavik Art Museum (Reykjavik, Iceland), Malmö Kunsthall (Malmö, Sweden), BOZAR (Brussels, Belgium), Kunstmuseum Luzern (Luzern, Switzerland), Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam, The Netherlands), and Centre Pompidou (Paris, France). In 1982, Gudmundsson represented Iceland at the Venice Biennale; in 2010, he received the Carnegie Art Award; and in 2022, he received the Honorary Award from the Icelandic Visual Arts Council for his distinguished career. He has been one of the most influential artists in the history of Icelandic art, with works inspiring numerous generations of conceptual artists throughout the Nordic region.