BÖRKUR - ICELAND

31 JANUARY 2010

Written by CAMILLE NAVARRO

Conditions A02 Börkur [2009]               

    Depending on the way you approach the subject, you might see fat rolls. You might see a landscape. You might be struck by the light, or the way the subject and environment bleed into one another, or the translucent quality of the skin of the model, or the lonely tuft of hair cheerfully waving from an otherwise smooth, pink surface.

Börker is a filmmaker and emerging photographer, currently making his debut in Los Angeles with two interrelated projects. The first is Conditions, a set of surreal and unsettling photographs of a real-life Venus of Willendorf, meant to show the toll that addiction, physical imbalance, and social alienation can have on the mind, body, and spirit.
 

Conditions A07 Börkur [2009]               

These portraits slap you in the face and give you something to think about from the first second you register them. It’s hard to know how to feel. Are they beautiful? Are they frightening? Should you feel pity or should you feel empowered? How in the world do you talk about these images without walking on eggshells? The girl standing next to me at the opening of the show had no qualms saying exactly how she felt. “It just disgusts me,” she said. “I mean, I’m a dancer, and as a dancer I know what a few extra pounds does to my movement. I look at this woman and all I can think is, ‘How does she move?’”

I will admit that at first, all I saw of the body were the folds and bulges. I have never been a person to deny the beauty of the female body in any shape or size, but seeing such pronounced stretch marks and such meager definition… well, I couldn’t help but think of the stress on her bones. There were muscles under there being crowded out by an unbalanced body system. That was hard skin to live in.
 

Conditions A06 Börkur [2009]               

But then I thought, what pearly skin she has. What a beautiful landscape her body has made. It takes a brave woman to take a nude photograph… and the longer I looked, the more Börker’s model kind of became my hero.

What Börker has done with Conditions is both impish and somewhat heroic – he forces the viewer to find something beautiful in an image that stands outside of social beauty standards. You may find aspects that are not beautiful as well, but mark my words, if you take the time to delve below the surface of the first glance, you will walk away with the seeds of something special.
 

Conditions A01 Börkur [2009]               

The second project is a short film Come to Harm, which is unfinished but will be completed with the proceeds from the sales of the Conditions series. (Yes, everybody – they are for sale.) In a small, dark room off of the main gallery area, Börker has clips of the film running continuously. They are in no particular order and have absolutely no sound - not that we would understand the dialogue, which is entirely in Icelandic. This creates an intriguing ‘less-is-more’ effect and leaves the viewer to make up his or her own idea of what is going on. The characters are stressed out, they have clumsy conflicts, and you can’t help but wonder what the impetus is for all the hubbub.
 

Conditions A08 Börkur [2009]               

If this debut show is anything to go on, Börker is worth following. This show is just a single example of what he is capable of. Who knows what he is going to do next – and what questions you are going to end up asking yourself when you find out?

http://www.blytheprojects.net/projects-conditions.htm