Quartet

The National Gallery of Iceland begins its exhibition program in the new year with an exhibition that brings together four contemporary artists: Gauthier Hubert (1967), Chantal Joffe (1969), Jockum Nordström (1963) and Tumi Magnússon (1957). All four center their work on the human being itself. The presentation of their work revolves around art itself and its history, both ancient and modern, and they take quite disparate approaches to historical points of departure.

Gauthier Hubert takes a conceptual position towards painting. His artworks arise from historical events that shed light on the practice and inner world of artists through the ages. (Interview with Gauthier Hubert)

Chantal Joffe often takes herself and her immediate environment as a point of departure. Her works are at once sensitive, sincere and importunate.  (Interview with Chantal Joffe)

Jockum Nordström draws, cuts and affixes childlike images of society as it often appears to us in historical soap operas about masters and servants. Yet vice and immorality simmer beneath the surface. (Interview with Jockum Norrdström)

Tumi Magnússon's stretched and disfigured images of body parts and skulls are a direct reference to the visual language employed by mischievous 16th-century masters against the dearth of ideas that characterized their time.