Iceland From the Outside

This joint exhibition showcases Barbara Hines and Alexander McQueen Duncan engaging with the remarkable primordial landscape of Iceland and focuses on glaciers, ice floes, water, and gravity. Their diverse and separate approaches explore very different aspects of this raw country, a land encompassing all the elements and therefore, change.

Barbara Hines’ work explores ice luminosity, its patterns, and internal structures, which both reflect and refract light. Her work reaches into the interior of ice caves and glacial recesses where the density of the ice produces a myriad of tones of blues. In parting company from the glacier, the ice manifests itself as unique architectural forms as it filters the light. Soft flowing lines give way to jagged and transparent archways over-hanging the sea; self-supporting cantilevers, some with knife-edges. Hines is focused on color and often layers wet washes over dry, which are mixed and enhanced with glazing.

Alexander McQueen Duncan’s work encompasses figuration and abstraction resulting in a duality of contrasting tensions. The core of his work is defined by his own physical presence in witnessing natural events, climatic conditions, changing colors, light, and visibility, while being ever receptive to an evolving set of experiences. The spectacular location of Iceland presented Duncan with a vast array of naturally evolving landscapes, where reflected light from the glacier results in a unique luminescent aura. The panoramic proportions of his Icelandic paintings invite the spectator to visualize an extended landscape that can only be viewed in totality from a distance.