Review by Kremena Nikolova-Fontaine. Photos courtesy of the museum.

If my articles were accompanied by one to five stars rating, I would have thought long before defining where Egill Saebjörnsson's cabaret art stands.

Immediately after seeing the exhibition "Spirit of Place and Narrative" at the Reykjavík Art Museum – Hafnarhús, I rather frowned than smiled. However, as I felt dissatisfied about being perplexed about the show, I decided to embark on a journey into the artist’s mind.

Egill Saebjörnsson. “Grey Still Life II” (2009).

Cabaret, I believe, is the right word to describe the fusion of music, video, animation, found objects and acting present in Saebjörnsson’s exhibition. Staring at it, one inevitably wonders what it’s supposed to be: artsy pretentiousness, some kind of mockery or disarming naivety.

My first encounter with the young artist and musician was at the National Gallery of Iceland where his installation and performative piece "You Take All My Time" (2002-2003) was on display a few years ago.

My reaction to it was surprise on the verge of shock and laughter—not an exaggerated reaction as you can see for yourself as some of Saebjörnsson’s work is available on YouTube.

At the National Gallery, Saebjörnsson’s work featured a stage in a dark room. The theatrical foreground consisted of a microphone, upright standing fiberboard, black grass and a goggle-eyed, bush-shaped singing mouth (the eyes and movement of the mouth are projected animation on the MDF board).

Saebjörnsson performed one of his compositions live, playing his guitar, accompanied by a peculiar video on the screen behind him. In a moonlit landscape, three comical tribal men provided back-up vocals before an airplane dropped an atomic bomb and the moon got upset.

I didn't fancy the tribal guys, who looked like caricatures of the most backward stereotype of non-Caucasian people.

Surprisingly, the work got stuck in my memory and when I read that Saebjörnsson’s work would be exhibited again at the Reykjavík Art Museum – Hafnarhús, I decided to pay the museum a visit and see what I would make of his show this time around.

While the above-mentioned work is not part of the current exhibition at Hafnarhús, the goggle-eyed animated characters have apparently become an essential part of Saebjörnsson’s visual vocabulary.

Perhaps those are the eyes of his invented conversational character Jörgen, known from earlier works, such as the "Three Daily Exercises" (2007) and "An Idear For Thwoo Feet, Two Hands & 4 Corners" (2005).

Egill Saebjörnsson. “Ping Pong Dance” (2006).

A prominent part of the exhibition space in the big hall of Hafnarhús is reserved for the installation "Wall to Wall" (2008) where two videos are projected on opposing walls and visitors witness a chat between two goggled-eyed, monster-like personas with changing facial attributes.

They share the same room with a fake Donald Judd sculpture, Harry Potter poster, dummy of a teenage boy surfing the internet and other stuff.

Having emerged on the art scene about a decade ago, Saebjörnsson’s immediate works after graduation exhibit a flare of Dadaistic old-fashionness and sensory overload, which I don't particularly fancy. The installation "Wall to Wall" (2008) bears stylistic kinship with his past works.

It seems that his latest creative search has led him to a more simplified impersonal exploration of color, light and refractions, as exemplified by "Grey Still Life" (2009) and "The Ping Pong Dance" (2006), displayed in the adjoining small hall of Hafnarhús.

More contemporary and conceptual, they remind me of Finnbogi Pétursson's architectural clarity and scientific interest, but Saebjörnsson has added a sense of humor and childish play into it.

If one compares "An Idear For Thwoo Feet, Two Hands & 4 Corners" (2005) and "The Ping Pong Dance" (2006), the difference in expressive means is gigantic between excess in the first example and economy in the latter. It's amazing that they were both made only one year apart.

To become better acquainted with these works in question, check out Saebjörnsson’s catalogue, modestly called The Book, for sale at Hafnarhús.

The Book follows the artist’s career path providing an abundance of text and images. It was quite a delightful experience finding a photo from 1992, when Saebjörnsson was 19, of an installation at the Hitt Húsid youth culture center festival in Reykjavík—perhaps his very first attempt in mixing music and drawings.

Seeing Saebjörnsson’s pursuit for the arts in perspective diminished any confusion and made me positively excited about what he will do next. By the way, he is nominated for the 2010 Carnegie Art Award and has just released a second CD. On Thursday December 17, you can hear his music live in Hafnarhús at 8 pm.

The exhibition runs until January 3, 2010. Admission is free.

Reykjavík Art Museum – Hafnarhús is located on Tryggvagata 17, 101 Reykjavík.

KNF- kremenan@gmail.com

Kremena Nikolova-Fontaine works at home for the elderly and is a passionate collector of art books, dedicating every spare moment to learn more about art while dreaming about having an exhibition of her own. She studied graphic design at the School of Visual Arts in Akureyri from 1999 to 2002. In college she realized that she didn’t want to be a designer or commercial artist but rather an illustrator and writer. At the moment she’s experimenting with her first graphic novel.