Days And Nights At The Museum: Finnur Arnar Concludes His Fully Immersive Stay At Ásmundarsafn

For nearly two months, the Icelandic multidisciplinary artist Finnur Arnar Arnarson has been living and working inside Ásmundarsafn — the former home and studio of pioneering sculptor Ásmundur Sveinsson, now one of three locations of the Reykjavík Art Museum. He sleeps there, eats there, and works there. He goes to the swimming pool before seven every morning, comes back, has breakfast, and starts working at 8:30. He works until eight in the evening, then cooks, watches Netflix, and goes to sleep. The only other times he leaves the museum are to pick up the essentials — more food, paint, or pilsner.

Finnur is the last artist to participate in Wonderland, the museum’s rotating exhibition programme of artists who have used Ásmundarsafn as an open studio over the past year — with Unnar Örn, Ásta Fanney, Halldór Ásgeirsson, Amanda Riffo, and Sara Riel each spending a couple of weeks at the museum before him. “I’m the last, and I decided to go the hard way,” he says. “To live here.”

Photo by Art Bicnick

Animal in a cage

Thirty-eight nights ago, Finnur moved into an orange tent standing on a wooden platform in what would normally be Ásmundarsafn’s exhibition hall. He brought a desk, a full-size fridge — which he opens to show me is stocked with a stereotypical Icelandic combo of harðfiskur, skyr, a leftover bolla, and rows of (low alcohol) Egils Pilsner — a record player he got for his 60th birthday, a collection of hats, and even a hammock.

By moving into the museum, Finnur wanted to “combine these two parts — of being an artist and making art.”

“In a way, I’m kind of an animal in a cage.”

To my surprise, this isn’t Finnur’s first time sleeping in museums or galleries. Once, he even convinced his whole family, four kids included, to move into one for three weeks. Perhaps knowing his background, the Reykjavík Art Museum was immediately on board. But they set a few ground rules: no guests in the mornings or at night, and no camping stove near the tent. “I guess they thought I would have a party here all night,” Finnur smiles, shaking his head when I ask if he’s thrown any. “I like being here alone.”

I point to one of the security cameras dotted through the museum’s perimeter. What about these? Does he feel watched? Finnur shrugs.

“In a way, I’m kind of an animal in a cage,” he smiles. “People come here, kids point at me, ‘hey, there he is!’ But it doesn’t bother me. I’m happy with it. I just try to be polite and explain what I’m doing.”

Dome and judgement

He continues, “I have done a lot of explaining about this piece in the past month. And afterwards, I always think, ‘What were you talking about?’ Because it’s a long trip. I’m realising now that it’s changing. It’s going somewhere I didn’t expect.”

During his 10-week stay at the museum, Finnur is working on a piece titled Dómur, which started as his opinion on “the male animal living on this planet, how it behaves and how it does other people harm.”

Dómur has a twofold meaning in Icelandic: a dome, but also a judgement. Finnur is judging the “male animal:” the greedy, rich, and powerful; the men who invite 11-year-old girls to parties. “Does getting rich and powerful mean you become a pervert?” he asks.

But he also treats this work as a kind of sentence — his condemnation to be an artist. “I don’t have any choice,” he says. “It’s not something I chose. It’s just something I do, and I try to do it all the way.”

Having built a career working in a variety of media — video, photography, installation, sculpture, stage design — Finnur says his stay at Ásmundarsafn feels like a challenge. “For me, it’s like meeting a giant.”

By that, he means a huge dome-shaped structure of Ásmundarsafn itself, where Finnur is painting a cathedral-like dome.

As we walk upstairs, the floor becomes scattered with brushes, paint, paper cut-outs, and masking tape. In the middle of space stands a huge wooden scaffolding Finnur built himself, saying it wouldn’t have felt right to simply hire an aluminium one. Besides, he says he was thinking about artists like Michelangelo painting the dome of the Sistine Chapel.

According to Finnur, Michelangelo wasn’t a painter — and neither is he. So, while the dome might appear fully painted at first glance, in reality it’s more of a mixed media collage: some elements are cut out from cardboard and glued on, others drawn through stencils and layered with paint. “I wouldn’t have the time, and I don’t have the skill to paint everything,” Finnur admits.

In the centre of the dome is a foetus, surrounded by four Vitruvian Man-like figures. “We all start like this,” Finnur says. “We have some DNA to work with, and then we have to decide what becomes of us. And we don’t decide it ourselves — not 100 percent. It’s the situation we live in, the family we are raised by, you know. It’s society.”

Below are rows of silhouetted figures in different poses — many holding guns — followed by a row of half-eaten apples, which Finnur says symbolise temptation. Encircling the upper part of the dome is a line of text that reads: “Tilgangur lífsins er að lágmarka skaðann af sjálfum sér,” or “the purpose of life is to minimise the harm you make.”

“The key word is minimise,” Finnur explains. “We can’t totally go through life without doing anything wrong.”

Becoming art

As we speak, the dome is only half finished. But as important as the dome itself is to Finnur, so is the rest of his stay at the museum. “This process started when I moved in, and it has been ongoing day and night until now.”

“We are used to artists just going into their studios, and when they come out, they have a perfect piece. But while they were making it, it’s not easy.”

“Maybe the main reason I started sleeping in museums and galleries,” he says, “it’s that it’s kind of a starting point. Nothing in the history of humankind has looked exactly like this — like your bed in the morning.”

He gestures around at scraps of painting supplies, cookie wrappers, a pile of empty pilsner bottles, a wall where he makes a mark for every night he’s spent at the museum. “I love that. Maybe it sounds crazy, but, in a way, I think that’s more magnificent than this,” he says, pointing at the dome.

“We are used to artists just going into their studios, and when they come out, they have a perfect piece. But while they were making it, it’s not easy. One day, you just think everything is going to hell. You don’t like what you’re doing,” Finnur says. “It’s not easy.”

He’s had bad days at the museum, too, struggling with how to finish the dome and wondering whether he could do it at all. But as his time at Ásmundarsafn is running out, Finnur’s been feeling more optimistic. Living at the museum, instead of just coming to work for a few hours a day, has helped him through the process.

“There’s something true about it,” he says. “I feel like I’m becoming more a part of what I’m doing.”

“When you’re at the studio, and you’re having a visitor, there’s always something that you hide, something you don’t want people to see. In this case, I’m opening my life and inviting people downstairs. I don’t hide anything.”

Photo by Art Bicnick

The exhibition will stay up after Finnur moves out on March 7. He’ll be back two weeks later to pack up his tent. The dome, however, will remain on view until September, at the museum’s request. “But in the end, it will be painted over, of course,” Finnur says, “This is Ásmundarsafn, not Finnssafn.”

Finnur Arnar: Dómur opens on March 7 at Ásmundarsafn and will be on view until March 22.

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