Today, Wednesday 1 February 2017, the Icelandic Art Center announces that Egill Sæbjörnsson, the artist selected to represent Iceland at the 57th International Art Exhibition - La Biennale di Venezia (13 May - 26 November 2017), has handed over the creation of the Icelandic Pavilion 2017 to Ūgh and Bõögâr, two Icelandic trolls turned artists. Entitled Out of Controll in Venice, Ūgh and Bõögâr’s project will be curated by Stefanie Böttcher, Director of Kunsthalle Mainz.


Egill, Ūgh and Bõögâr. Courtesy and copyright the artist and i8 Gallery

Who has control? Who is guiding our actions, our knowledge, our thoughts, even our powers of imagination? Who is exploiting whom or what? These are questions that Egill Sæbjörnsson consistently grapples with in his work. In phantasmagorical settings, he fills dormant objects with life by overlaying them with animations, projections of light and sounds, allowing their voices to be heard and their characters to be experienced. When an eraser starts flying, stones begin singing or handbags perform a choreographed piece, established relationships and hierarchies are challenged and inverted.

While Ūgh and Bõögâr may appear to belong to an archaic world of fantasy, the more time we spend with them in Out of Controll in Venice, the more concrete this seemingly other world becomes. For Sæbjörnsson the trolls are already part of his reality: having encountered Ūgh and Bõögâr in Iceland in 2008, wherever Sæbjörnsson goes, they follow. They have even followed in his artistic footsteps, sharing his studio space in Berlin, creating works and presenting exhibitions. The full story of the artist’s encounter with Ūgh and Bõögâr can be found here: Trollbook [PDF].

Out of Controll in Venice will extend beyond the Pavilion of Iceland, both in time and space. From now until the opening of Biennale Arte 2017 and beyond, Ūgh and Bõögâr will be infiltrating our lives - no longer just the artist’s, but bit by bit, more and more people will be drawn into their world, encountering everything from the trolls’ thoughts and artistic output, to their music and culinary habits (they enjoy eating humans). The culmination of this encounter – a large-scale, immersive and participatory presentation for Biennale Arte 2017 – will share Iceland’s joyous and terrifying co-existence with the trolls to the wider world, revealing how a simple exchange can evolve into deeper understanding, transforming our perspectives, our ideas of truth and reality, and our relationship with the world.

Stefanie Böttcher, curator of the Icelandic Pavilion 2017 and Director of Kunsthalle Mainz, said: “Out of Controll in Venice is Egill Sæbjörnsson’s most ambitious work yet. Without noticing, we outgrow the role of passive observer and gradually grow into the artwork. Rather than following the activities of the trolls, it is we who are being followed. Rather than seeking an encounter with this world situated between imagination and reality, we are being sucked into it.”

Björg Stefánsdóttir, Director of the Icelandic Art Center, said: “In recent years, the Icelandic Pavilion has frequently been a venue for dissolving social constructs – whether they be ideologies, nationalist sentiments or the myth of the artist. This tradition continues with Out of Controll in Venice, where the boundary between the real and the imagined completely dissolves as we are drawn into the enthralling and ferocious realm of two trolls.”

Read about Egill Sæbjörnsson’s encounter with Ūgh and Bõögâr in the Trollbook [PDF]

Continue following the trolls’ journey to Biennale Arte 2017 on Instagram @icelandicpavilion #outofcontroll

Join the conversation #icelandicpavilion2017 #ughandboogar #egillsaebjornsson #BiennaleArte2017

Download image: https://we.tl/FHNkyZt7g5
Credit line: Egill, Ūgh and Bõögâr. Courtesy and copyright the artist and i8 Gallery

For further press information and images, please contact:
Helena Zedig at Pickles PR
Tel: +44 (0) 7803 596 587
Email: helena@picklespr.com


Notes to Editors

Egill Sæbjörnsson (b.1973) lives and works in Berlin and Reykjavik. At the forefront of experimentation, he combines music, sculpture, video projection and animations, as well as his own performance – whether as a mime artist, speaker, actor, musician, or singer – to create fictional spatial narratives. Theatrical, poetic and playful, ordinary dormant objects come alive in Sæbjörnsson’s works – be they plastic buckets, a wall, rough stones or handbags – drawing the viewer into a wondrous world where the real and the imagined collide.

Sæbjörnsson works and performances have been shown at The Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum for Contemporary Art in Berlin, Frankfurter Kunstverein, Kölnischer Kunstverein, The Baryshnikov Art Center in New York, Oi Futuro in Rio de Janeiro, PS1 MoMA, Kiasma in Helsinki and Museum of Contemporary Art Australia in Sydney. Gallery shows include: i8 Gallery Reykjavik, Hopstreet Gallery Brussels, Isabella Bortolozzi Gallery Berlin and Johann König Gallery Berlin. Sæbjörnsson was nominated for the Carnegie Art Awards in 2010 and his works can be found in several private collections and museums. Recent public works include Steinkugel, a permanent public art work for the Robert Koch Institute; and Berlin and Cascade, an extended light installation for the Kunstmuseum Ahlen. In 2011 he collaborated with Marcia Moraes and Robert Wilson on a remake of Wilson’s Einstein on the Beach. Sæbjörnsson has also published three books in conjunction with his work and released five albums. www.egills.de

Egill Sæbjörnsson is represented by i8 Gallery. www.i8.is

Ūgh and Bõögâr are Icelandic trolls. They are 36 meters tall and love to eat people, hide behind buildings and – being shapeshifters – transform themselves into new things. They are ferocious
beings, but is that all there is to them? Or do they have a hidden, softer side? Meeting Egill Sæbjörnsson some years ago, Ūgh and Bõögâr started to notice that humans know things trolls don’t know. It made them curious and they started to learn from him, developing a passion for art and traveling. Ūgh and Bõögâr are forces, entities, phenomenons of nature. Nobody know where they come from, how old they are or how they entered Sæbjörnsson’s life. Now they have entered yours, since you have read about them.

Stefanie Böttcher (b. 1978) is an art historian and curator. Since 2015, she has been the director of Kunsthalle Mainz, where she curated On the Shoulders of Giants and Detail is all, as well as a solo exhibition with Lebanese artist Rabih Mroué. She worked as artistic director of the Künstlerhaus from 2007 until 2013, where she gave young international artists such as Lara Almarcegui, Ahmet Öğüt, Pilvi Takala and Kateřina Šedá their first solo shows in Germany. In addition, she has organised extensive survey exhibitions of works by more seasoned practitioners such as Tim Etchells and Robert Kinmont. In 2013, the Goethe-Institut awarded her a curatorial research stipend for Serbia, and the same year she curated the group exhibitions 7 Ways to Overcome the Closed Circuit and 8 Ways to Overcome Space and Time, in collaboration with the Museum of Contemporary Art Belgrade (MoCAB). Böttcher has also published broadly on individual artists and art as a site for utopia.

The Icelandic Arts Center (IAC)
Based in Reykjavik, the Icelandic Arts Center (IAC) is dedicated to promoting Icelandic visual arts internationally. Affiliated with Iceland’s Ministry of Education, Science and Culture, the IAC strengthens networks between the visual arts scene in Iceland and the global cultural sphere. Through funding and logistical assistance IAC helps Icelandic artists and arts professionals in producing projects abroad, and facilitates cooperation with public and private associations, organisations, and enterprises worldwide. The Icelandic Art Center (IAC) is Commissioner of the Icelandic Pavilion at the 57th International Art Exhibition - La Biennale di Venezia on behalf of the Icelandic Ministry of Education, Science and Culture. www.icelandicartcenter.is