Davíð Örn Halldórsson: Typisch gluggaveður

„Typisch gluggaveður“
The studio myth - My view of Davíð Örn Halldórssons artistic practice

In 2018, Davíð moved to Stuttgart/Germany with his fiancée and son. He ended up in
my studio via three corners and asked for a workspace. I made a room available to him.
This building with other artists from different genres is located directly in the city center
and also in the middle of the construction site of Stuttgart 21, one of the largest
construction projects in Germany in recent years. Davíð has been working in this space
ever since and he often works late into the night. When he‘s working, you don‘t see
much of him and I only know he‘s there through the sounds of music or YouTube chatter
coming from his room into the hallway. But even Davíð needs a break from time to time,
so we meet in the kitchen every now and then and have a coffee while we talk about art
and current projects. As his studio is located directly on the construction site, he has
seen the place grow over the years and experienced the extreme interventions in the
urban infrastructure at first hand. Through his window, he has been able to follow the
construction progress over the last 6 years, rediscovering materials, machines and
structures time and again and combining them with the sounds of the city. Some of the
construction work was so intense that our entire house shook and we could feel the
building site physically. Almost all of Davíð´s works for exhibitions in the last years, have
been created in this house, including this new series of paintings. As always, the works
are painted with great virtuosity and Davíð‘s technique is difficult to comprehend,
especially since the addition of epoxy-resin. The paintings are multi-layered and complex
in the truest sense of the word and very delicate. You could say that Davíð works
obsessively on his works, continuously and down to the last detail of a detail. I always
get a slight feeling of vertigo when I look at them. Overwhelmed and fascinated by this
unique use of color, Davíð‘s paintings arouse fascination and curiosity. What lies
beneath the layers of paint and epoxy? Whether it‘s a clown poster or a simple board,
Davíð manages to create a lot with very little and always offers viewers new ways of
reading. The theme of Davíð‘s current exhibition „Typisch gluggaveður“ is the motif of
the window, a classic and recurring subject in the history of art. The view outside and
inside are fundamentally different. While outside there is a rather monotonous building
site atmosphere, consisting of steel, concrete and brutalism, the view inside is all the
more colorful, subtile and sensual, and he interprets these views outside in his very own
way: mysterious, confusing and overloaded. The view inside his room is also a work of
art in itself, everything is seamlessly painted, walls, floor and even the furniture, you
don‘t know where to turn your gaze, in between stand, lie and pile up the pictures he is
working on in parallel, everything is colorful and merges into Davíð‘s visual language.
But I am convinced that the pictures only develop their true quality in a neutral gallery
space, where the effect of the pictures is concentrated. In a white cube that creates the
possibility of engaging with a single work and immersing oneself in Davíð‘s world, are
you ready for this?
Text: Erik Sturm

Davíð Örn Halldórsson (b. 1976) graduated with a BA-degree from Iceland Academy of
the Arts in 2002. Davíð has taken part in many group and solo exhibitions in Iceland,
USA and Europe. Recent exhibitions include the solo “Mitt litla líf – pappír eða plast” /
“My Little Life – Paper or Plastic” Hverfisgallerí, Reykjavík, Iceland, 2022, and the group
exhibition “Solid transitions” Stuttgart21, Stuttgart, Germany. Davíð lives and works in
Stuttgart, Germany as well as Reykjavík, Iceland.