Una Gunnarsdóttir, Garden of Obsession.

Press release, January 2022

Dear observer,
(I want to explain my paintings as simple as I can, but it will only be a little part of it, since painting for me is more a mental thing than rational, and I am missing many words, evidently)

I work within narratives and figuration simply because of my curiosity towards human beings. I want to understand the human figure arriving from water and consisting mostly of water (and water goes everywhere). This is of course a projection, because I take an active part. This exhibition circulates around the idea of controlled society, while still carrying the chaos of water inside.

Una Gunnarsdóttir, Garden of Obsession.

I have painted a garden, in order to organize movements and thoughts. Overwhelming uncertainty of life is ecstatic. One cannot maintain still. I need to be doing something to feel alive, and I need to feel something to not be lost. When I get lost, this garden (my consciousness) turns into a forest (unconsciousness). When in lonely places the paranoid fear has the potential to reduce human beings to their most animalistic instincts. Then it is time to cut down the trees. Symbolism is what I cling to in order to create meaning.

The brain is the garden of obsession, soup opera, prose, feuilleton, leaves that keep falling, it is an eternal autumn. Episodes in life just keep happening repeatedly. From the same root, same form, regularly. The timeless temptation of the apple is reoccurring. Take a bite of technology or sex. I walk around with this daydream about human transcending into trees, I imagine the brain as roots, where we inherit our memory. First losing our color, then fate out like a smoke. Not so much winter, just a very long autumn and then suddenly spring.

Humans (myself included) have undergone the reverse metamorphoses into being ghosts of our own desire. Desire of achievement slowly making one fate out. Achievement is, as I sense it, experiencing as many mixed emotions, as many as a trained eye can see nuances in colors, still maintain control. Wonderfully paradoxical! This desire on flip mode is rage. Still rage is better than depression, in the hierarchy of achieving. I see this pattern to circulate; I think I circulate within it.

– Una Gunnarsdóttir.

Exhibition period: January 28 - March 7, 2022.
More info: www.instagram.com/aaaanordhavn