Icelandic artist Hrafnhildur Arnardóttir, otherwise known as (), fittingly describes her immersive environments of hair as “an exploded rainbow.” Cloaking walls with neon fur and hanging tendrils of fuzzy fibers from the ceiling, the artist creates enormous, extravagantly colored landscapes designed to be ruffled and stroked as viewers pass through the cave-like walls and underneath the suspended strands.
In with , Shoplifter recounts her first encounter with the medium as a child in Iceland and her later move to New York, where she’s spent the last 25 years creating kaleidoscopic landscapes brimming with textures. She perpetually gravitates toward vibrant, bold color palettes because of their therapeutic, playful, and ornamental qualities, and although she creates such strikingly manufactured installations, she describes her practice as a form of “hyper-nature… I’m not competing with nature. I just exaggerate and create this abstraction that resembles it but isn’t literal.”
Watch above to dive deeper into Shoplifter’s inspirations and process, and see an archive of her technicolor creations on .
“Hyperlings” at the Art Gallery of Alberta. All images courtesy of Shoplifter
“Hyperlings” at the Art Gallery of Alberta
“Hyperlings” at the Art Gallery of Alberta
“Hyperlings” at the Art Gallery of Alberta
Related Posts
