Samúel Jóhannsson
Samúel
Akureyri Art Museum, West Room
January 16ᵗʰ - 28ᵗʰ
Samúel Jóhannsson was born in Akureyri in 1946. He first garnered attention at age 14 for unusual portraits, which he had made for an art exhibition held at his school, Gagnfræðaskóli Akureyrar. Since 1980, he has worked consecutively as a visual artist, mainly using acrylic paint, ink, varnish and iron.
As in Samúel’s former exhibitions, the human body and the face are his subjects. This time he focuses on the interpretation of the face rather than the shapes of different body parts. The imagery is strong, both in regard to colours and form, and the harsh expression of the face. Sometimes Samúel appears to be working with “the unbearable lightness of being” — impulses which lead to light-heartedness and seriousness at the same time, which, at the end of the day, aren’t exactly foreign to the human being.
Samúel has been involved in several art exhibitions in his career. He has held more than 30 solo exhibitions and participated in a number of group exhibitions in Iceland and abroad, the last of which was Creation of Childhood in Akureyri Art Museum in the spring of 2015.
