As previously mentioned, in the summer of 1977, Pálsson exhibited at Galerie Waalkens, which was the starting point of a series of collaborations with Galerie A. From the correspondence, it appears that Pálsson exhibited on the recommendation of fellow countryman Hrein Fridfinnson, who lived in Amsterdam, and who, like Bakker, contributed to a fruitful artistic exchange between Iceland and the Netherlands during these years. To this end, Bakker used the sentences from Pálsson’s letter quoted above. Portrait of Pálsson in 1968 with The best pieces (1965), unknown photographerĪt Pálsson’s request, Douwe Jan Bakker wrote the display room texts for his friend’s exhibition at Galerie A in Amsterdam. Magnús Pálsson, Flæðarmál (the beach) (1976) at Galerie A Amsterdam, 1977, photo: M Pálssonģ. Note from Magnús Pálsson to Douwe Jan Bakker, 31 January 1994, collection RKD, Douwe Jan Bakker ArchiveĢ. Thus, with this simple, objective technique, he manages to evoke various phenomena.ġ. This raises the question whether there is an actual difference between space and that which was captured in plaster. He then moved the resulting plaster blocks some way forward, effectively relocating the captured residual space. The work consists of casts made at several locations in an exhibition room, using plaster to fill up the interstitial space between the wall and around the legs of two people. If nothing else than to show that also I can do something about space’. He jokingly referred to a second work as a ‘masterpiece I called something like “Displacement of a space”. ‘If nothing else, than just to show that also I can do something about time, which seems to occupy everybody’, he writes with mild (self-) mockery. This way, he aims to not just capture the helicopter, but also the moment. The three casts were made different in height, ‘to show that the machine wasn’t landing quite horizontally’, Pálsson writes. The work consists of three plaster casts of helicopter wheels which together evoke a positive: a big, just barely hovering helicopter. In a letter to Bakker, Pálsson included an explanatory sketch of his best-known sculpture, The seconds until the Sikorsky helicopter touches down (1976). Stacked on top of each other, the three pieces fit seamlessly, just like at the coast, the seawater extends into the sloping sand, and the sky fills up the space between waves. It is a cast of a stretch of beach in three parts, with the sand, the surf and the sky as individual components. Several works illustrate this principle, such as Flæðarmál (the beach) from 1976, which was exhibited a year later at Galerie Waalkens in Finsterwolde. ‘No thing exists without its opposite also existing’, he said in an interview in 1978. To Pálsson, an absence, a negative, also implies a positive. Not saying much, and yet plenty to say – which ties in with a constant element in the early oeuvre of Magnús Pálsson: the inversion from ‘nothing’ to ‘something’. The frankness with which he talks about his life, work and developments in Icelandic art is what makes reading this correspondence particularly worthwhile, as do the warmth and subtle humour that permeate his writing.Įven a scribbled note is a source of beauty. His letters to Bakker describe how Pálsson sent him Puffin meat, and typically Scandinavian reversible mittens with two thumbs. In this episode, this remarkable figure is discussed by curator Lynne van Rhijn. Some of the most engaging letters in this archive were written by his good friend Magnús Pálsson (1929), one of Iceland’s best-known artists. Thursday 4 August 2022 The RKD has, among its records, the archive of artist Douwe Jan Bakker (1943-1997).
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