EGGERT PÉTURSSON : One Hundred Paintings

There is a story about a painting by Cezanne of apples and this work hung in the display window of a Parisian art dealer. A passer-by liked the work, stepped inside the Gallery and asked the dealer to cut out one of the apples and sell it to him.

In the summer of 1977, Hreinn Fridfinnson had an exhibition at Gallery Sudurgata 7, Reykjavik. One of the four works on display consisted of a small pile of stones spread out on a table. The visitors were invited to take a stone with them. In that way the work  became  the story of the stones after the artist had interfered with their existence by gathering them together.

In Paris, Yves Klein sold art lovers “Zones of Immaterial Pictorial Sensitivity” to his  customers. Buyers paid in gold and were given a receipt which then was burned and the gold thrown into the river Seine.

At this exhibition, One Hundred Paintings, I show my works in two groups of fifty paintings. Within a rectangle, fifty square-shaped paintings are hung so one can follow the passing of summer from spring to autumn according to the time of blooming of the plants, in a linear process, down the wall, as if you were reading a page from a book. On the other 3 walls opposite, fifty rectangle-shaped paintings hang in a line, and here the viewer can once again read the summer timeline from left to right.  During the exhibition, a book-work will be published in which the paintings are featured in their actual size, partially or completely, according to whether they fit within the size of the book. Images from both groups will be mixed together in the order that they are hung at the exhibition and that way they will still form a new whole.  It is unclear if the exhibition features one, two, three or one hundred works and where their boundaries lie.  I have spared the gallerist the trouble and fashioned one hundred fragments of paintings which are for sale and which will go with their prospective owners. Each picture gathers a story of its own. Other guests, those who did not purchase paintings, will take with them the experience and memories of the exhibition. The book-work may contain some of that experience, and those who could not visit the exhibition can leaf through it.  It may well be that the one hundred paintings will one day be gathered together again, but that will be in different circumstances and at another time.

-Eggert Pétursson 2007