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The Mayor Gallery is having an exhibition by the Icelandic artist Erró of recent oil paintings, alongside a group of largescale
watercolours, remarkable for their political satire and references to early comic book illustration.
Gudmundur Gudmundsson – who later adopted the pseudonym Erró – was born in Olafsvik in 1932. He is one of the
most significant contemporary Icelandic artists. After studying in Norway and Italy, he settled in Paris in 1958, where
his work became part of the Figuration Narrative movement. Erró ranked among the radical artists of the 1960’s whose
views on art and politics were those of a new generation – people who embraced representational art and were critical
of society. The art of Figuration Narrative employed the shocking irony, typical of Pop Art movements, by confronting
clichés with the drama of reality to raise awareness about the power of imagery.
Erró’s art connects the turbulent and revolutionary 1960’s with the skeptical and media-focused world of today. His
‘grand narratives’ exude sinister and uninhibited self-gratification, which highlights the grotesque panorama of the last
century. By collecting images from advertisements, comics and posters, he then assembles them on canvass to create
paintings that are there to be read, as much as they are to be seen. Through his chosen medium he denounces societies
aberrations: consumption, commercialisation, eroticism, accepted violence, and the Americanisation of values. These
themes are then demonstrated with mixed feelings of humour and suffering. In some of his compositions he cleverly
inserts references to other artists work such as Mucha, Léger, or Picasso, whereby he weds them to images from pop
culture, and transforms the old into the new.
His work often explores the prefabricated picture of comics or famous Walt Disney characters, and Erró frequently integrates
speech balloons into the composition with simple, aggressive texts expressing deliberately manipulated clichés.
The same holds true for his apparently simplified pictures, with their emphasized contours and hyperrealist choice of
colours. The famous men and women depicted in exaggerated Superhero forms, express the apocalyptic mood prevailing
in postmodern westernized societies, where any genuine action or emotion is demoted to the level of kitsch.
Erró has shown regularly around the world in both museums and commercial galleries, however this is only his second
show in the UK and first in London. He had previously shown at the Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh in 1993. In June 2001
The Reykjavik Art Museum - Hafnarhus was inaugurated and dedicated to Erró.
Visitor Information
Mayor Gallery 22a Cork Street, London, W1S 3NA
Mon-Fri 10am-5.30pm; Sat 10am-1pm
Admission: Free
Nearest Tube Station: Green Park or Piccadilly Circus.
Press enquiries: Niina Cunynghame at The Mayor Gallery
niina@mayorgallery.com +44(0)20 7734 3558
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