Asgeir
Petursson

Coloured lines form a pattern on a dark field and Ásgeir Pétursson uses these lines to create his images, from a simple movement across the paper, to a complex interplay in large works where the lines run criss-cross over surface. The images are simple and beautiful geometric studies about lines, colours and shapes, reminiscent of the works of the early abstract painters but when we look more closely we realise, perhaps with surprise, that these are not paintings: They are photographs.

One of Ásgeir’s concerns here is whether photographs can be abstract. The aim of the abstract painters was to free painting from the role of being a “mere” reflection of reality; to free painting from the “yoke of things” and allow colours, lines and shapes to play freely across the canvas as a melody quivers in the air when a violin is stroked or a flute blown. A photograph, however, is by definition always a picture of something: Light is reflected off whatever thing we aim our lens at and an image of the thing is then imprinted on film or an electronic sensor. We can use filters, lighting, perspective and post-production techniques to distort the original, even to the point of where it is no longer recognisable. Yet, the photograph is always at root an picture of something.

The lines in Ásgeir’s works are also pictures of something.

They show the lines drawn across the night sky by the navigational lights of airliners. Of course, the eye sees them as moving points of light but the camera can slow time to show us this movement as a line. Ásgeir has, then, found coloured lines that he can then recompose at will. In other words, there is a contradiction involved in these works: They are photographs of reality that nonetheless become the material for apparently abstract pictures.

Perhaps the problem is not as complicated as we thought. The abstract painters wanted to escape from the yoke of things by concentrating on colours, lines and shapes yet, if we think about it, the world is full of colours, lines and shapes. All of this can be seen in the landscape if we look closely and landscape painters such as Kjarval og Ásgrímur Jónsson often disassembled their landscapes into coloured shapes and crossing lines. Perhaps, then, the distance between reality and abstraction is not as great as we have long thought. If we look around we can find abstract motifs everywhere but we don’t notice them in our daily life where it is more important to identify objects and respond to them. Drivers who only sees the colours of the cars around them, the circularity of the wheels and the symmetry of the driving lights will soon find themselves in an accident. We have to adopt a different attitude, a different way of seeing, to elicit this abstract side of what we see around us. When we do, however, we can unpack abstract pictures from even the most mundane experiences.