DANGER ZONES 2018/19:
Gallery Tukt
12.01.2022
But you are more than the souvenir you would like to be and you can prove it. You have a birth certificate stating where you’re from, a passport showing where you’ve been, and neighbours knowing where you live. You have somewhere to be, something to do, and someone who cares. You know where you belong and what belongs to you. You are able to spot yourself in a mirror, in a crowd, and on the screen you keep in your pocket. Your attitude is circumstantial and your moods don’t believe in each other. The way you talk gives away your reason and the way you listen reveals how you think. You know what you’re doing and what it’s doing to you. You are the average of the people you know and and the median of the ones you recognise. You are the outcome of what you do minus what you do not do. You are possibilities divided by limitations multiplied by luck raised to the power of randomness.
The sequence of this statement follows a simple logic; it flows from what can be labelled as purely personal to what can be deemed entirely universal. Psychology will be mostly present in Part One and in the early part of Part Two; social context and historical baggage will be dealt with mostly in the second half of Part Two, and Part Three will emphasise the inevitability of escapism in a world of indifference. All parts demonstrate my reasons to paint. Part One is about necessity, Part Two is about knowledge, Part Three is about fear.
1.
I wake up and go insane. Reason is strongly rooted in me and I’m not afraid of losing my mind but each day is different and I will never be able to learn any of them. I would like to limit myself but I have no boundaries. I would like to face my fears but I have no anxieties. I would like to explain myself but I have lied so often it is way past the point of being intentional.
2.
I wake up with half a memory of something I said, something I did, some things that should summarise a person into a set of predictabilities. Personalities are way more up for grabs than generally considered, but stick to one of them and you won’t be called crazy. Needless to say, I am more than the lie I would like to be and I can prove it: I have a birth certificate stating where I’m from, a passport showing where I’ve been, and neighbours knowing where I live. I have somewhere to be, something to do, and someone who cares. I know where I belong and what belongs to me. My class is manifest in my taste and my background appears in my style. The way I talk gives away my reason and the way I listen reveals how I think. My name is a myth. My attitude is circumstantial and my moods don’t believe in each other. The story of my life is written in my skin by the promise of death and the people I feel. My actions determine my future and my reactions demonstrate my past. I know what I’m doing and what it’s doing to me. My self-image is self-made and marked by what the child I used to be would think of the adult I have become. I am able to spot myself in a mirror, in a crowd, and on a screen kept in my pocket. I am capable of intellectually saying simple things in a hard way and artistically saying hard things in a simple way but I would rather be a shock effect than a prisoner of cliché.
3.
I wake up but not really. Reality plays only a trivial role in my reveries. These days my mind is too tired to think so I just dream, dream all day long. There are three kinds of dreaming: Dreams (the subconscious mind summarising reality into demonstrating metaphors), fantasies (dreams directed by the conscious mind), and nightmares (unconscious anxieties demanding to be realised). Art is where all systems of symbolic structure function at once.
You are not supposed to like my paintings. Unless you are like me and you have the thing where the wires in your brain are crossed and everything that’s supposed to be joyous is frightening, they should be of no interest to you. My paintings are not pretty pictures. I paint in order to hunt down the chaos in my heart before it can surprise me. I distrust sunlight, and maybe that’s why I can’t stop painting these windows into the night.
EM
CV
2016-2021 Surrealist Painter
2021 Film maker directed Panic Poetry (nominated for The Golden Egg 2021).
2021 Columnist writing philosophical opinion pieces for Icelandic newspapers.
2017-2018 Performer at the Reykjavik Street Theatre.
Bio
2020-(2023) The Slade School of Fine Art (BFA painting).
2021 RIFF Talent Lab.
2020 Alexandria Nova intensive programme for young theatre directors.
2018-2020 Icelandic University of the arts (BA performing arts).
2017 London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts (summer school diploma).
2018 Graduated from Hamrahlid Junior College.
contact: ernamist@ernamist.net