COPENHAGEN.- For Chart 2025, i8 Gallery’s booth features a two-person presentation of works by Ryan Mrozowski and Arna Óttarsdóttir. For Ryan Mrozowski (b. 1981, USA), new paintings explore perception and optical oscillation through masking flora with saturated areas of colour. From Arna Óttarsdóttir (b. 1986, Iceland), we include new weavings that combine elements of abstraction and figuration, and explore the physical properties of the material she uses.
As is consistent throughout her practice, Arna Óttarsdóttir uses her own notebooks, which are filled with thoughts and drawings, as source material for her works. By incorporating sketches and less formal visual elements into her weavings, Óttarsdóttir infuses her work with a personal energy. The patterns, textures, and colours vary within individual works, allowing the artist to investigate the aesthetic intricacies weaving allows.
Arna Óttarsdóttir (b. 1986, Iceland) lives and works in Reykjavík, Iceland. Her work has been featured in exhibitions at the Reykjavík Art Museum; Living Art Museum; Hafnarborg Centre of Culture and Fine Art; Kópavogur Art Museum. Óttarsdóttir's weavings have also been shown internationally at venues including Nordatlantens Brygge, Copenhagen; Turner Contemporary, Margate; Åplus, Berlin; and Cecilia Hillström Gallery, Stockholm.
The works display the principal characteristics of tapestry; interplay on horizontal and vertical axes. In the weaving, Óttarsdóttir continually seeks to break away from tradition by opting for images of varying complexity with diagonal lines, spirals, and circles. The prototypes come from her sketchbooks and the importance from one image to the next seems to be rather equal and without hierarchy. And yet, on closer inspection, there has been a selection and execution during the process. The look of the amalgamation has been tested and some images have been tinkered with, as can be seen with large splotches due to digital editing or erasing. All this, in addition to several eccentric details from sketches and other sources, is conscientiously addressed in the weaving projects.
It is tempting to look at Óttarsdóttir’s work, as textile, in light of the medium’s history over the past decades, with the appropriate references to social and feminist critique. Yet it seems like Óttarsdóttir actively tries to bypass that discourse by emphasising her own process of discovery and love of experimentation. Ultimately Óttarsdóttir is driven by the same idea – the transformation of the mundane and unremarkable into something of significance. The works project the joy and wonder of alchemy, generating value from of nothing but diligence and ingenuity.
Ryan Mrozowski's immersive language, which is rooted in visual and linguistic puzzles, frequently uses botanical subjects to explore elements of presence, absence, and perception. Foliage, fruit, and letters become abstracted in Mrozowski’s compositions, as the artist crops and repeats his motifs. The resulting lyrical patterning disrupts the traditional still-life and often reimagines nature with methodical order.
Ryan Mrozowzki (b.1981, USA) lives and works between Hudson and in Brooklyn, New York. Mrozowski earned his MFA from Pratt Institute, New York, in 2005, and his BFA from the Indiana University of Pennsylvania in 2003. His work has been the subject of exhibitions at international venues including Galerie Nordenhake, Berlin (2024, 2022); Ratio 3, San Francisco (2021); Chapter, New York (2019); Simon Lee Gallery, London (2018); Hannah Hoffman Gallery, Los Angeles, CA (2018); and Arcade, London (2016).
The repetition within the compositions is reflected in the doubling of canvases, as seen in Mrozowski’s pendants. By masking flora with saturated areas of colour, Mrozowski provokes an optical oscillation for the viewer, as one’s mind strives to connect the two paintings into a single image. Imbued with vibrancy, the artist’s diptychs create a distorted mirroring effect that can be found throughout his practice.
