untitled
2001 colour photograph 74,5 × 110 cm
untitled
2001
colour photograph 101 × 150 cm
untitled
2000
colour photograph 74,5 × 110 cm
untitled
2000
colour photograph 74,5 × 110 cm
untitled
2000
colour photograph 74,5 × 110 cm
untitled
2001 colour photograph 74,5 × 110 cm
untitled
2000
colour photograph 74,5 × 110 cm
untitled
2000
colour photograph 74,5 × 110 cm
untitled
2001 colour photograph 74,5 × 110 cm
untitled
2001 colour photograph 74,5 × 110 & cm 110 × 165 cm
untitled
2001 colour photograph 74,5 × 110 cm & 110 × 165cm
Hrafnkell Sigurðsson's tent-landscapes are among the works that have gained him most acclaim. Each of these is composed in the same way—a single tent positioned in the centre of the frame in a largely featureless snowy landscape. These are made photographs in a systematic manner. One could say that they defy composition by way of their strict adherence to regularity. The framing is similar to the works of earlier conceptual artists, such as those of Berndt and Hilla Becher in the seventies. The tents are all similar, although with differences in style and color. All of them are dome tents, as those used while hiking. On some of them the outer covering has been removed so as to reveal the transparent inner skin. In the last image of the series the tent has been placed upside down, like it was floating in the snow.
These images relate in a somewhat strange manner to landscape tradition. The tent is an intrusion in the natural landscape, just asas the snow-mountains intrude in the urban landscape. They, and their fabricated cloth, is the central element of the image, with the surrounding elements of “natural” environment, the landscape withits depth of field, becoming a frame—a Derridian “parergon”. The curved shape of the tents contrasts with the snowy steppe; a totally alien structure in the landscape. It disrupts the perceived depth of field, blocking what could otherwise have been a sublime and far-reaching landscape. The general effect is that of flatness, with the tent functioning as a strange compositional device within the frame.
Alien to the landscape, it is easy to imagine that these tents have been erected by some solitary traveller. The images evoke a kind of nomadic body in their presentation, suggesting, as Hrafnkell Sigurðsson mentioned in a recent interview, a body of a heroic traveller sleeping within the tent itself. The presence of the singular tent in the wilderness provokes such an interpretation—within the abstract form and ritualized composition we also have an invocation of a bodily presence, some physical being hidden within the structure.