On May 18, 2011, the Clocktower Gallery and Art onAIR.org opened surge, a site-specific installation by Chicago-based Icelandic artist Anna Jóelsdóttir; curated by Alanna Heiss.
Working with oversized sheets of mylar hand-painted with acrylic and ink, Jóelsdóttir transforms the Clocktower’s Performance Gallery into a site where ideas, experience, and history billow and break across the space’s pillars, ceiling, and floor. At first delicate and ethereal, Jóelsdóttir’s sculptural canvases reveal a world in which connections and fissures occur with the paradoxical logic of intuition. Drawing from personal experience, art history, and interpretations of current events, surge’s construction and content reflect the everyday, unconscious practice of creating personal narratives from memory, and the inevitable interpretations and misinterpretations of human interaction.
