“The main elements of the show are flowers, spiders and wine. The wine and flowers are alluring and enticing while spiders evoke fear and repulsion. Spiders are naturally attracted to flowers, occasionally something small and unpleasant can sneak its way into something desirable, spoiling its appeal.
Painted flowers are forever in bloom, captured and preserved on the canvas. In this exhibition they are paired with plastic and ice, materials which also attempt to preserve and immortalize. These see -through elements; plastic, frost and glass, are the throughline of the show, both containing and obstructing the subjects. The glasses that hold the wine, the plastic that is artificial and toxic and the frost that encloses and preserves.
The works contain many echoing and contrasting elements. The wine glasses and the frost are shiny and appealing, cold and hard to the touch yet breakable and fragile. Both the flower petals and the plastic bags are thin and delicate. The plastic wrapping resembles a spider -web and fake flowers attract spiders just like the real ones. The flowers wilt in the wine and suffocate in the plastic. The paintings show wine glasses that resemble flowers and flowers that resemble spiders. Glass stems and flower stems. Drops and frost. Dew and wine.
It all combines in a feeling of unattainable longing, of fragility and fleetingness. Of just trying to enjoy a small comfort – a glass of wine or flowers but by trying to avoid any unpleasantness they all melt together, rendering them unable to be savoured or appreciated”
– Helena Margrét Jónsdóttir, 2024
Helena Margrét Jónsdótti, ‘ Í EILÍFUM BLÓMA’, Exhibition Text
Helena Margrét Jónsdóttir, born in 1996, currently lives and works in Reykjavík, Iceland. She graduated from the Iceland University of the Arts in 2019 after having studied fine art at the The Reykjavík School of Visual Arts and The Royal Academy of Art in Den Haag. Jónsdóttir has exhibited widely, group exhibitions including ‘Art Is Our Only Hope’, Reykjavík Art Museum (2025), ‘Inner Tides’, Plan X Gallery, Capri (2023), and ‘Sync in Progress…’, Tang Contemporary Art, Shanghai (2022). ‘Í Eilífum Blóma’ (Icelandic for ‘Forever in Bloom), her debut exhibition with Carl Kostyál, follows on from the success of her first museum solo exhibition at the Reykjavík Art Museum in Hafnarhús in 2023.