Næmi, Næmi, Næm // Sindri Liefsson at Ásmundarsalur, Reykjavík

A Clayton

The evocative scent of freshly hewn wood provokes a moment of transportation, out of the city and into the wild, to a musty forest where muffled sounds intermingle with the ancient creak of tall trees. I breathe in, the smell conjuring up the crackle of bonfires, of cold nights and storytelling. This all before we even enter the gallery space, in which Sindri Liefsson’s new installation Næmi, Næmi, Næm approaches multi-sensory experience through conceptual sculpture. Working with culinary researcher and product designer Kjartan Óli Guᵭmundsson, Liefsson’s exhibition plays with the connections between smell, taste, touch, and sound, with vision taking an almost secondary role. It is not necessarily what we see that is the primary aim here, but what we feel.

That is not to say that the space is visually lacking. The white cube space at Ásmundarsalur in Reykjavík, is transformed into a sort of woody soft-play area. The floor is covered in a layer of larch wood chippings, roughly and irregularly carved, so that the audience walks over them as they move in and around the space. This element is causing the fantastic, strong smell of wood, which as the visit goes on, takes on different character notes of citrus, fire, and a sharper, danker smell. I would imagine that as people walk over the wood, more oils are released and the wood disintegrates. It will be interesting to revisit the space at the end of the exhibition to see if the floor has transformed into mulch, or if Liefsson intends to use the logs of larch stacked in the corner of the room to layer more chips over, so that the scent retains that freshness. The floor is spongy underfoot, tempting visitors to lie down on it, or to kick them like crisp leaves in Autumn.

By the stacked logs, someone continuously chips away with a small axe. This intense action is somewhat odd; is it a gesture to the artist’s process, a reference to the reductive nature of sculpture? Or is it a performance, resulting in a continuous cycle of new material for the space? Liefsson described the physical struggle of bringing the wood into the space, joking that the act even made him angry. Yet when the smell of the wood permeated the entire gallery, he knew he was creating an absolute experience. I wonder whether Liefsson’s decision to cut all the logs to the same size is simply a practical one. Derived from a forest just outside of Reykjavik, the larch immerses us in Icelandic nature, and I perceive references to fairy tale narratives, bound by morality, choices and fatalism. Therefore, the destructive act of felling trees actually takes on a nostalgic quality, where surreal deja vu emerges, serenely opposing the aggressive connotations of human intervention in nature.

The melding of organic with synthetic is sometimes confusing. The gradual decline into disorder when these two collide is compounded here on a large dining table bearing sculpted wood ‘dinner plates’, set up as if druids were about to appear and feast. Showing off their natural beauty, each plate held a bright red chilli. We are invited to eat a chilli. What? The juxtaposition of an exotic fruit on the larch plate appears surreal. The act of eating this offering purposefully heightens your senses through taste, touch and smell. Kjartan Óli Guᵭmundsson describes this act as entrotopic, discussing this connection between art and food as an activation of all the senses, the chaotic meeting of all of them and what this makes us feel, where it takes us. A sour beer is served. Kjartan reveals that he has made this by extracting yeast from the wood around us. It is sharp, vaguely bitter, standing in contrast to the flavour of the chillies. The performative nature of experiential dining will be further explored by a ticketed dinner party with a tasting menu in the space. Based on my experience here, I am convinced it will be pretty memorable.

The use of organic material, whether food or wood, in artistry is vitally engaged with here. Næmi, Næmi, Næm emphasises how we use our senses to transport us outside of the material to something more intangible, that which we recognise but can never quite put our finger on. The space articulates feeling in a playful, performative modality. I left feeling like I had re-enacted an ancient tale, but with a sour beer and a stuffed chill, confused, but satisfied. This exhibition may not aim to change the world, but at a time when our value of experience and feeling is hyperactive, it taps into our basic faculties with a warm touch.

Næmi, Næmi, Næm by Sindri Liefsson runs from 15.10.21 – 7.11.21

Ásmundarsalur, Freyjugata 41, 101 Reykjavík.

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