< Artists
Hreinn Friðfinnsson
For the past 50 years, Hreinn Friðfinnsson (1943, Iceland - 2024, Amsterdam) has been celebrated for his lyrical and poetic use of everyday objects. His work investigates our understanding of time and the world around us. He was a natural storyteller, and his vocabulary, underscored by a delicate sense of humour, playfully combined a sense of narrative with perceptual ploys.

Friðfinnsson was not only one of Iceland’s leading conceptual artists, but he himself could be considered a landscape, an atmosphere, a state of mind. His work has inspired younger generations of artists, such as Olafur Eliasson and Philippe Parreno, who have supported his work throughout the years. He was an artist’s artist in the truest sense of the phrase, but this has meant that his work has remained relatively unknown to the broader public.

Hreinn Friðfinnsson’s conceptual work has been characterized as poetic and playful, dealing often with storytelling, nature and time. It can be almost anything: a photograph, a story, a tracing, an atmosphere,a quasi-scientific experiment, a paint stirring stick or a secret. A split second up in the air between the years 1975 and 1976, one shoe searching for the other one to form a pair. His works are often structured around dualities and reversals. Both in form and content they are hard to pin down. The works remain in state of flux even after their conception, often older works are reused or expanded upon.

Born in 1943 in Baer Dölum, Iceland, Hreinn Friðfinnsson had been living in Amsterdam since 1971. He had exhibited internationally since the 1970s and had solo exhibitions at respected institutions such as the National Gallery (Reykjavík), the Serpentine Gallery (London) and Bergen Konsthall (Norway). In 2019-2020 a major retrospective To Catch a Fish with a Song: 1964-Today took place at KW Institute of Contemporary Art in Berlin and Centre d’Art Contemporain in Geneva. Amsterdam based venues such as Gallery 845 (1970’s), Galerie van Gelder (1990’s), Kunstverein (2015) and Eenwerk (2018) have hosted solo shows.

Works

Five Gates for the South Wind
Hreinn Friðfinnsson
I Collected Personal Secrets
Hreinn Friðfinnsson
Attending
Hreinn Friðfinnsson
House Project
Hreinn Friðfinnsson
Palace
Hreinn Friðfinnsson
Sanctuary
Hreinn Friðfinnsson
Suspended
Hreinn Friðfinnsson
Untitled (Vases)
Hreinn Friðfinnsson
Pair
Hreinn Friðfinnsson
Composition with Meteorites
Hreinn Friðfinnsson

Gallery exhibitions

Exhibitions

To catch a Fish with a Song
Kunst-Werke Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin (Germany)
2019 - 2020
To catch a Fish with a Song
Center for Contemporary Art, Geneva (Switzerland)
2019
Skulptur Projekte 2017
Münster (Germany)
2017

Projects

Absences, mues et macules
Ignasi Aballí, Léa Belooussovitch, Marc Buchy, Lieven De Boeck, Hreinn Friðfinnsson, Ellen Harvey, Rinko Kawauchi, Nicolás Lamas, Benoît Maire, mountaincutters, Cornelia Parker, Claudio Parmiggiani, Benoit Platéus, Jorge Méndez Blake, Christopher Orr, Evariste Richer, Solène Rigou, José María Sicilia, Namsal Siedlecki, Thu Van Tran, Chaim van Luit, Xie Lei