Sigurdur Gudmundsson

Dancing Horizon 1970–1982 is a comprehensive collection of the photographic work of Icelandic artist Sigurdur Gudmundsson (born 1942), the "Nordic father of Conceptual photography," focusing on a critical period in his development. In the 1970s Gudmundsson made a famous series of conceptual photographs he called Situations, in which the artist is posed with various props—for example, balancing a wooden slat on his head to make visual contact with the horizon in the background, or digging himself into the grass. Influenced by the informality and unpredictability of international Fluxus, which Gudmundsson encountered in the late 1960s as a member of the progressive Icelandic artists' collective Súm, the Situations are humorous, absurd and lyrical; they have been characterized as "visual poems." More than 80 artworks are reproduced here (many of them rarely exhibited or published), along with previously unpublished studies.