Two sculptures, anonymous figures strangely imbued with some quality that makes them more than just representationally human, lean precariously toward the sea. Between them is a meaningful bond, though between them too lies a vast ocean. Steinunn Thórarinsdóttir created and installed these powerfully pensive sculptures to commemorate both British and Icelandic fishermen who perished at sea during the so-called Cod Wars of the mid-twentieth century. One figure stands in Vík on Iceland’s southern coast, the other in Hull, England, cast in aluminum and bronze respectively and both atop tall basalt pillars. The tie between them is invisible. But as Icelandic president Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson has said of these sculptures, both called Voyage (2006): they are “a great reminder that nations can achieve peace.”

These figurative sculptures can be reminders of many things, for ever complex is the human condition that Steinunn inexhaustibly explores through her art. This year and last, she brings to new audiences these sculptures that, in their androgynous anonymity and quiet contemplation, might remind us of ourselves. Her exhibition Horizons, an outdoor installation consisting of twelve cast iron figures, opened September 18, 2008 at the San Antonio Botanical Garden in collaboration with the Blue Star Contemporary Art Center, also in San Antonio, Texas. Created for the sculpture garden at the Katonah Museum of Art in New York (July 2007 to March 2008), Horizons then traveled to The Dixon Gallery and Gardens in Memphis, Tennessee (May to August 2008). And though the original concept was a site-specific installation, the figures and their intangible relationships that form the exhibitions have worked well, in nuanced permutations, in the subsequent sites.

In San Antonio as well as in the two previous locations, the life-size figures stand directly on landscaped ground, placed with careful consideration amongst the trees. They all lean slightly forward, one with hands clasped and head tilted as though lost in thought, another with arms in sway as if frozen mid-movement; each figure holds a unique pose and relationship to the surrounding trees. Angled as they are, they collectively bear a dynamic tension despite their immobility. With an earthy, ocher patina and a texture akin to the trees around them—in fact, the Katonah Museum sent Steinunn a sample of bark from the Norwegian spruce trees in the sculpture garden—they form a forest of their own, not interacting with or acknowledging one another, simply standing in solitude.

Yet like the two sculptures on the Icelandic and British coasts, there is a connecting thread, or, to be precise, a unifying horizon line. Inserted into the chest or shoulder of each figure is a horizontal band of translucent green glass, each positioned at exactly the same height. Just as the trees are connected if only by virtue of the ground from which they all take root, Steinunn’s figures share these level pieces of glass that form an unseen plane between and around them. As Steinunn sees these bars of glass, which completely transect each sculpture so that light may pass through, they are “connected to horizontal, eternal thoughts. And,” she continues, “I think it’s very connected to Iceland, this vastness—opening them up to the light. They’re in the enclosed space within the wall, and then they have this opening in themselves.” It is as though this shared but broken horizon binds the figures together on some spiritual level, though each stands in an existential isolation. Only one odd man out, a seated figure—without a glass inset and whose smooth surface texture is distinct—is an observer of this world of which he is not quite a part.

Though Steinunn has worked with the human form for over thirty years, viewing it more as a medium than a subject, she finds it “an endless source of inspiration.” She sees her work as having evolved into something subtler; her figures do not express a specific mood or message, but to find a meaning in them, we must each interact with them in our own personal way. Though she says many viewers interpret her sculptures as “introverted” or “sad,” this is not Steinunn’s intention; she thinks of them more as in a state of contemplation and solitude, even if they are grouped together. One of her many public works in Iceland, Shadows (1998), just outside Reykjavík in Seltjarnarnes, is composed of two aluminum figures who lean closely towards one another, but just short of touching. This is a running theme throughout her work: “Fundamentally, we are all alone,” she reflects. It’s not a matter of loneliness, but of independence. “It’s up to you what you do,” she says. “We write our own story.”

As for Steinunn herself, she views herself as being slightly aloof from the hub of the Icelandic art world. Having studied in England and Italy in the mid- to late 1970s, she grounded herself in a figurative sculpture tradition from the beginning of her career. When she returned to Iceland in 1979, she found that she was alone amongst her contemporaries, whose focus was predominantly conceptual. But though she feels that her work has “gone in and out of fashion” and that artistically she will never be part of a group, this does not bother her; to Steinunn, what matters most is being true to herself and her own artistic integrity.

Anyone who lives in or visits Iceland will, undoubtedly, see Steinunn’s work: her sculpture Directions (2007), comprising four figures facing the cardinal directions, stands as a greeting in the Leifur Eiríkur International Airport. Perhaps most familiar to residents of Reykjavík is Roots (2000), two facing figures from the torso up standing prominently downtown on the sidewalk along Bankastræti. Their shoulders shine, polished over the years by the hands of those who touch them. Absorbed in meditative solitude as they may be, their worn patina is evidence that they are not alone.

Steinunn Thórarinsdóttir’s exhibition Horizons at the San Antonio Botanical Garden runs through June 2009 and will continue its tour to future venues. Additionally, a documentary film of the same name by American filmmaker Frank Cantor will be premiered on Icelandic National Television in November 2008.