The Amelie A. Wallace Gallery at SUNY College at Old Westbury – New York is a fine address for exhibitions. Guđjón Bjarnason is the first Icelandic artist showing there. The title of the show, SquARE zERo alludes to the dominant shape of the sculptural works on view and to a destructive impulse—a seeming desire for nothingness, for degree zero—that paradoxically results in a creative act. Most of the works begin with a square format. The major piece in this show, MurMur zERo-desert (2006), began as a collection of 40 steel squares (each 31.6” x 31.6”) that were detonated with dynamite near the artist’s hometown, Reykjavik. As a result, many of the units are now disrupted and twisted, and have thus lost their status as squares, becoming instead something more chaotic and irregular. These “open“ forms will be arranged systematically according to the levels of destruction on the wall and the floor.

Born in Reykajvik, Iceland, in 1959, Bjarnason studied law at the University of Iceland and received advanced degrees in fine arts and architecture from the Rhode Island School of Design, the School of Visual Arts and Columbia University, all in the U.S. Since returning to Iceland, he has shown his work widely both at home and abroad. His more notable exhibitions include the semi-retrospective EXploding MEaning at the Reykjavik Art Museum, a solo museum exhibitions at the Snug Harbor museum and HP Garcia Gallery in New York.

In addition, a panel discussion with art critic and curator Lilly Wei and Jonathan Goodman, art critic and lecturer at Pratt Institute is scheduled at 3 pm on October 16th. A second talk will be held on November 13th at 6.30 p.m. at the American-Scandinavian Foundation in Manhattan: The artist in discussion with managing editor of Art Forum Richard Wine and Icelandic art critic and LIST co-editor Jón Proppé.