Getting ready for their first retrospective show at the Reykjavík Art Museum

Love is subject only to one hard rule: it does not abide by any other rules than those of love itself. For The Icelandic Love Corporation (ILC), this means that anything goes, if it feels right and innocent. And rather than speaking through a rhetoric of aspiration or irony, the members of ILC strongly believe in their own intuition and the value of their art with an iconoclastic humor. Since its foundation in 1996, ILC’s mission statement ‘Everything is possible. Love conquers all’ has been the central theme of the artists’ work, which comments on both romantic and commercial aspects of love. They have celebrated images of womanhood, amorous fancies of both sexes, and affection as a purchasable good. With a deliberate degree of amateurism in their performance style, they stress their irreverence for art performances, though they are very much aware of the gap between art and life and aim to cross this border.

After a series of experiments with an investigative spirit, the artists gradually came to focus on addressing particularities of their home country. A triangular plot of vegetation adjacent to the power station in the southern highlands of Iceland called Mother Earth (2005) draws attention to the full forces of nature and the beauty of the countryside. In Invasion – Expansion (2006) ILC plays with the Icelandic names for seagulls and, in costume, portrays them as global bullies. The performances of The Icelandic Love Corporation are never limited to one occasion but are rather repeated and modified to nourish the substrates of their creation, to fathom the different depths of their themes, and to unearth their divergent verities.

The Icelandic Love Corporation is comprised of artists Eirún Sigurdardóttir (b. 1970), Jóní Jónsdóttir (b. 1972) and Sigrún Hrólfsdóttir (b. 1973). Their studio hides behind an almost invisible entrance without a doorbell. At its heart is a large table in front of a licorice mosaic depicting the ILC artists driving topless in a pink Cadillac through Van Gogh’s Starry Night. This is the place where the three artists crochet, think, stitch, discuss, google, glue, drink their coffee and engage in an outpouring of their ideas.

As a consequence of the artists’ investigative process, they found it important from the beginning to document their work; however, the three artists use the documentary process as an element of field-testing. Sometimes they use video and photography to capture moments of their creation or performance. Then they use this documentation as apparently objective evidence to incorporate a sense of authenticity into their fanciful and visionary work. But they also stress the artificial circumstances of the aspects of staging, and therefore the double-sided coexistence of art and reality. Acting out their first performance, Kiss (1996), the artists kissed each other on live television before one of them pressed her lips against a glass panel in front of the camera – to describe it technically. Though to the viewer it appears that ILC kissed the entire nation, the transmitting media itself becomes an obstacle, preventing direct interaction. Though ILC is primarily considered a performance group, their body of work equally includes both the documentation of their performances as well as their props. Their various individual projects refer to and build on one another, gradually creating what is now an interwoven body of works. So it seems fitting that in September 2007, the Reykjavik Art Museum will present the first retrospective of The Icelandic Love Corporation at Hafnarhúsid (The Harbor House). Works from the Corporation’s first decade will be on display, alongside new works created especially for the exhibition.

Contrary to the increasing individualization and a high premium on self-actualization in the art field, the members of The Icelandic Love Corporation chose, at an early time, to use costumes to equalize their individual appearances. As it were, the ‘props’ and ‘costumes’ used in performances have become the primary art objects presented in ILC’s shows, and vice versa. To put it simply, ILC uses their exhibits like clothes in a wardrobe: the elements of their work are always ready to be combined, converted, and always meant to be wearable pieces of artwork. Wearable art itself is the artists’ focus in 2007. They have already produced an extended version of their crocheted exhibit Second Skin, which has been involved in a series of performances since 2004. During her current world tour to promote her recently released album Volta, Björk has been wearing the ILC’s newest piece. In June the creation of a wearable tent is planned for presentation in the Nikolai Church in Copenhagen.

So there’s no wonder that the Icelandic Love Corporation’s workspace is defined by and nearly bursts at the seams with all kinds of wool, fiber arts materials of a variety of textures, the artists’ books, and their own artworks. A figurine with a partially completed crocheted costume glances out from the left. The artists’ live performances comprise entire environments, and this seems exactly to be commemorated by their studio as well. As visitors leave the ILC studio, one of the artists will inevitably guide them out. ‘There is a saying,’ they explain, ‘that otherwise, people take away the sensibility.’