Tolli - Art Gallery - Reykjavík, Iceland

Þorlákur Kristinsson (Tolli) emerged as one of the instigators of the New Painting in the early 1980s. Few movements in art swept along so many adherents in such a short time. As a movement, this period was short-lived, it was an eruption of the emotions, a Dionysian dissidence against many things including over-analysis and excessive rationality in the arts. The time had come to let the emotions speak. The fact of the matter is that the intellectual faculties do not create. They are incapable of that – but they make fine back-seat drivers. Intellect tells us what is important and what is not. In all creative work the emotions and insight must be in the driver’s seat; intellect is essential , but only to keep watch. Today we are driving in new times but through the same landscape,  

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with the same view but in a different vehicle – and rather faster through an area that has been largely trampled down if not paved over. This area of reality that science has mapped out completely. But the map of the area is not the area itself.