Hildur Ásgeirsdóttir Jónsson

Hildur Ásgeirsdóttir Jónsson

Seismic Rift

September 10 to October 21, 2021

Tibor de Nagy Gallery is pleased to announce Seismic Rift an exhibition of recent work by Hildur Ásgeirsdóttir Jónsson. This will be Jónsson's third solo exhibition at the gallery and her first at the gallery’s 11 Rivington Street location. The artist lives and works in Reykjavik, Iceland and Cleveland, Ohio.

A painter and textile artist, Jónsson uses the unique and active landscape of Iceland as her source of inspiration. In the current exhibition, she focusses on an area in Iceland where two tectonic plates make contact - a geological line that runs through Iceland from the southwest to the northeast. At this meeting point, there is a lot of energy in the ground, right under foot. Sometimes it is evident as in an erupting volcano, sometimes you just see it in the landscape, the earth having moved and having been torn apart. Over the last few years, Jónsson has observed this evolving and tumultuous aspect of the landscape and translated it into her painted and woven works.

Twice a year Jónsson travels to her part-time home in Iceland. There she takes photographs and makes preliminary studies. Back in her studio in Ohio, she enlarges and projects the images, reworking them until she has the desired composition. She begins each work by painting the images on the loose silk threads – next these hand painted warp threads are transferred to the loom. The weaving then commences and the image is combined with the woven weft horizontal threads. Jónsson’s practice is squarely at the intersection of weaving and painting, where she deconstructs elements of both processes. The hybridized results blur the boundaries and sit comfortably between fine art and craft.

Hildur Ásgeirsdóttir Jónsson was born in Reykjavik, Iceland in 1963. She has a BFA and an MFA from Kent State University. Recent notable solo exhibitions include Abattoir Gallery, Cleveland, Carl Solway Gallery, Cincinnati, the Tang Museum, Skidmore College, Reykjavik Art Museum, MOCA, Cleveland, Pocket Utopia, New York, Turpentine Gallery, Reykjavik. She was included in the group exhibition Objects: USA 2020 at R & Company, New York, Threads of Art, National Gallery of Art, Reykjavik, Painted Threads, Visual Arts Center of New Jersey, Pretty Raw: After and Around Helen Frankenthaler, at the Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, curated by Katy Siegel. The artist has received numerous grants and commissions, including The Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award, The Cleveland Arts Prize, Ohio Arts Council Grants, and public commissions from the Hilton Hotel Convention Center and the Cleveland Clinic Foundation.