ÞÓR VIGFÚSSON

Thór Vigfússon (b. 1954) has for many years been investigating the interaction between art and its surroundings through works made of glass, plexi, mirrors, and formica. Commissioned for many recent public buildings, his works dialogue with architectural design through their simple geometric forms and pure colours.

Vigfússon is currently exhibiting a series of wall works at i8 made with painted glass, a material he has been working with in recent years. The glass he uses is cut in a particular shape, the edges polished, and the back painted with a certain colour. Obviously the slightest changes in proportion or color of work built on such minimalism leads to significantly different outcomes. Each work also changes according to its location and that location in turn is altered as it accommodates the work – the interplay amplified in the mirror effect of the glass.

Although each work is an independent phenomenon, the repeated shapes and specific palette of colours lends them all certain coherence. The green hue of the thick glass further serves to unify the different colours. The diamond shape that Vigfússon has chosen for this exhibition differs from his earlier square works as it resists allusion to an “image on a wall” and is therefore less stable.  The new shape is further distorted and stretched, each diamond three times wider than it is high, becoming an altogether distinctive geometric form without exterior reference.