Quake
Finnbogi Pétursson
Curator: Paulina Brzuskiewicz-Kuhn
Gallery 1
13th September – 23rd December 2025
Vibrations of the Depths
Life what is it but a dream
Lewis Carroll
The mirror, an object present in virtually every home today, was once considered a doorway to another world, concealing countless secrets. Numerous superstitions and rituals were associated with it. One of these, still alive and practiced in many cultures and religions, is the covering of mirrors as part of funeral or mourning traditions. Just as the eyes of the deceased are closed after death to prevent the soul from returning to the body through them, mirrors are covered in the belief that a misguided soul might become trapped in this artificial, alternative world or be drawn into the world of evil forces. Covering a mirror also protects mourners from seeing the deceased’s reflection, which is believed to portend misfortune or another death. Both European spiritualists and African shamans viewed mirrors as portals to the spirit world. What might happen the next time we look deeply and intently into a mirror?
At the exhibition Quake at the LÁ Art Museum in Hveragerði, the Icelandic artist Finnbogi Pétursson allows himself to lift the veil of this mystery, inviting us into the world he has created, an intimate journey into the mirror and at the same time into ourselves. In his artistic oeuvre, Finnbogi has long been fascinated by the physicality of phenomena, creating immersive installations in which he speaks, through the language of art, about the extraordinary world of light, sound, and energy properties that fundamentally belong to the quantitative sciences. In Hveragerði, he also employs his own unique means of expression, but this time, the scientific and artistic dimensions of the works seem to serve merely as a background to their spiritual dimension.
The exhibition consists of two installations that can be read (or rather experienced) separately, but which, in this context, are closely related. The first one is created by the previously mentioned mirror, but the artist has created a specific physical environment around this object, a kind of experimental composition of electromagnetic waves, the subtle energy vibrations of which we are generally unaware, yet which enable our seeing of the world around us. Sound and light are playing together, but for the “melody” to emerge, our presence is essential —especially lenses of our eyes and the mirror’s surface.
The second installation in the exhibition space is built around a red urn, which likely still contains the ashes of a deceased person. It is bounded not only figuratively but also physically, to a tomb several hundred kilometers away from Hveragerði, located in the northern part of Iceland, in the valley of Svarfaðardalur near Dalvík. Finnbogi connected the two sites by installing a seismographic system that captures the slightest vibrations occurring beneath the tombstone in Svarfaðardalur, a recording of which can be read in the exhibition space at Hveragerði. Although both the tombstone and the urn containing the supposed ashes commemorate the deceased, serving as a testament to his death and passage into a state of eternal stillness and nonexistence, both of these man-made objects are filled with life – nature and its pulsating matter constantly beat out their own rhythm, a recording of which unfolds before our eyes. The seismograph becomes a tool in the artist’s hand, a tribute to life.
The message of the work, in which the artist, through the use of seismic energy, juxtaposes the life-giving and vibrating earth with the ashes of a deceased person who, born from the dust of the earth, returned to dust, is universal, but in this case, certain circumstances give the work additional layers of meaning, making it very site-and-personal-specific. Primarily, because of the figure who is the protagonist of this installation. The ashes that may be contained in the urn are not accidental. They belong to the famous Icelandic seismologist, late Ragnar Stefánsson, who led the development of monitoring systems and research aimed at providing advance warnings of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. Also, the site where we currently can read the record of seismic waves spreading in a place several hundred kilometers away, is very special because of its exceptional dynamism, geothermal and seismic activity – you can experience the living presence of the primal forces of nature right here. Moreover, Hveragerði bears a particular significance to Finnbogi. The connection with this place was established already in his childhood – according to artist’s memories it was a stopover during a trip with his parents to the east of Iceland. Even then, his imagination was stimulated by the nearby geyser and boiling natural springs, as well as information about the unfortunate accidents that regularly occurred there. The fascination with this area remained alive in the artist’s adult life.
When Finnbogi received the invitation to prepare a solo show at the LÁ Art Museum in Hveragerði, he intended to collaborate on it with Ragnar, in private life Finnbogi’s father-in-law. He decided to create a work using seismographs that would be inspired by the geophysical activity of the region as well as Ragnar’s own invented devices. Unfortunately, Ragnar died in July last year. The exhibition in Hveragerði and the work specially prepared for it by Finnbogi could therefore be read also as a kind of tribute to Ragnar and his special love for Iceland and its seismic uniqueness.
The two installations presented at Hveragerði are interconnected on many levels. Primarily through the use of their key building blocks – invisible waves of light, sound, and energy, including seismic ones, permeating the entire exhibition space. Finnbogi exploited their presence and properties to create entirely new sound and visual effects, allowing the audience to see what is normally inaccessible to the human sense of sight, which operates only within its specific range of visible radiation. The artist simultaneously imbued both works with a thanatological dimension. In the urn installation, Finnbogi evokes death directly, but what we see in the mirror is, in a sense, also an exploration of dying – as a result of the mutual “cancellation” of light and sound waves on the mirror’s surface, we see a reflection of reality in a very low radiation range, just slightly above zero, that is, close to the point where life disappears – death arrives.
In this extraordinary way, Finnbogi fits into the history of using mirrors as elements of art—both for visual effects and symbolically, exploring issues such as identity, perception or the ephemeral nature of reality. It is a tradition dating back thousands of years of human culture—the ancient Egyptians, for example, made the connection between mirrors and the essential nature of things, believing that mirrors represent the solar disk, a source of light containing the essence of life . Mirrors and the use of mirror reflections also appear in the works of many contemporary artists, such as Bruce Nauman, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Yayoi Kusama, Rebecca Horn and Cindy Sherman, to name just a few of the art world’s biggest stars. However, the use of mirrors in Finnbogi’s work is entirely different from most contemporary works; the artist’s installation has a more spiritual and intimate dimension. It evokes associations with the paintings of the Old Masters, who used mirrors to reveal important truths to the world. As in Lukas Furtenagel’s 1529 painting, “The Painter Hans Burgkmair and His Wife Anna” – the couple gazes at us from the painting, their faces reflected in the mirror which Anna holds. However, we see not their faces reflected there, but skulls—the work takes on a vanitas form, advising us to remember the death that awaits everywhere.
However, to avoid ending on such a pessimistic note, let us recall the words quoted at the beginning of this text by Lewis Carroll, a 19th-century English writer who, as an artist, mathematician, and photographer, was deeply fascinated by mirrors and, in his „Alice Through the Looking-Glass” story, told readers what could be discovered on their other side. And there, you can find the world of dreams and imagination. We invite you to enter it.
Paulina Brzuskiewicz-Kuhn
Finnbogi Pétursson (born 1959) studied at the Icelandic College of Arts and Crafts and at the Jan Van Eyck Akademie in the Netherlands. His first exhibition was held in 1980 at the Sudurgata 7 Gallery, an artist-run gallery that was a centre for avant-garde art in Iceland. Since then, he has participated in over 140 group and solo exhibitions worldwide, including the Venice Biennale in 2001, where he represented Iceland. From the beginning, he has mixed sound with visuals in his installations and has expanded his works into the realm of music and even performance art. He uses technology in quite inventive ways in his artworks, transforming, for example, sound waves into light that is projected onto the rippling surface of water, or creating kinetic sculptures that produce sound. Finnbogi’s works are in numerous private and public collections, including: the Malmö Konstmuseum (Sweden), TBA21-Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary Augarten (Austria), the Michael Krichman and Carmen Cuenca collection (USA) and the National Gallery of Iceland.
Wystawa Finnbogiego Péturssona w Muzeum Sztuki LÁ w Hveragerði będzie wyjątkowa z kilku względów. Będzie to pierwszy indywidualny pokaz tego współczesnego artysty w miejscu, które ma dla niego szczególne znaczenie. Wspomnienia związane z tym regionem sięgają dzieciństwa – jako chłopiec zatrzymywał się tu podczas podróży z rodzicami na wschód Islandii. Już wtedy jego wyobraźnię pobudzały pobliski gejzer i gorące źródła termalne, a także opowieści o nieszczęśliwych wypadkach, które regularnie miały tu miejsce. Fascynacja tym rejonem, jego wyjątkowa dynamika, aktywność geotermalna i sejsmiczna, żywa obecność pierwotnych sił natury były częstym tematem rozmów artysty ze słynnym sejsmologiem Ragnarem Stefánssonem – prywatnie teściem Finnbogiego – który rozwijał system monitoringu i badań mających na celu wczesne ostrzeganie przed trzęsieniami ziemi i erupcjami wulkanicznymi. Finnbogi zamierzał współpracować z Ragnarem przy wystawie w Hveragerði, aby stworzyć dzieło oparte na sejsmografach, inspirowane aktywnością geofizyczną regionu oraz urządzeniami własnego pomysłu Ragnara. Niestety, sejsmolog zmarł w lipcu ubiegłego roku. Wystawa w Hveragerði i specjalnie przygotowane na tę okazję dzieła będą więc pewnego rodzaju hołdem dla Ragnara i jego szczególnej miłości do Islandii oraz jej sejsmicznej wyjątkowości.
Finnbogi Pétursson (ur. 1959) studiował w Islandzkiej Wyższej Szkole Sztuk Pięknych oraz w Akademii Jana van Eycka w Holandii. Jego pierwsza wystawa odbyła się w 1980 roku w Galerii Sudurgata 7 – prowadzonej przez artystów i będącej centrum sztuki awangardowej w Islandii. Od tego czasu brał udział w ponad 140 wystawach indywidualnych i zbiorowych na całym świecie, w tym w Biennale w Wenecji w 2001 roku, gdzie reprezentował Islandię. Od początku swojej twórczości łączył dźwięk z obrazem w instalacjach artystycznych, rozwijając swoją sztukę również w kierunku muzyki i performance’u. W swoich pracach w ciekawy sposób wykorzystuje technologię, przekształcając na przykład fale dźwiękowe w światło, które rzuca na falującą powierzchnię wody, lub tworząc rzeźby kinetyczne generujące dźwięk. Prace Finnbogiego znajdują się w licznych kolekcjach prywatnych i publicznych, m.in. w Malmö Konstmuseum (Szwecja), TBA21–Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary Augarten (Austria), kolekcji Michaela Krichmana i Carmen Cuenca (USA) oraz w Narodowej Galerii Islandii.
LÁ Art Museum thanks South Iceland Development fund for their support.
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