digital drawing

Water is metaphorically understood as a carrier of memory and information. It is intrinsic to the existence of all life on Earth, yet any disproportion of water bodies across the planet can greatly endanger life. Water can be both playful and devastating, soothing and disrupting. In his recent work Flying Waters, Egill Sæbjörnsson invented self-generative water streams that fly around an architectural surface, above the heads of the viewers, creating a sense of illusion that is magical and self-evident at the same time. Sæbjörnsson understands art as a species of its own, interacting with our lives. Through this work, he draws an intriguing triangle between a digital artwork that has its own agency, nature, which it resembles so deeply with its endless movement and irregular flow, and human perception that is expanded and stimulated in interaction with both. “Nature is like an app,” the artist says. Carefully programmed, yet often unpredictable. Flying Waters, just as real natural entities, are calming our nerve systems, ‘becoming with’ us. They deserve our respect and equal treatment in the process of creating new (ecological) justice and dissolving non-functioning hierarchies.

Commissioned by Therme Art

Egill Sæbjörnsson (born 1973) is a Berlin-based Icelandic visual artist and musician. Sæbjörnsson graduated from the Icelandic College of Arts and Crafts (now the Icelandic Academy of the Arts) in 1997 and studied at the University of Paris, St.Denis, from 1995 to 1996. He is interested in the connection between mental and physical reality, best known for his video installations and performance-based work. Sæbjörnsson approaches his work with humour and perhaps a sense of magic or other elements, such as music, which acquire an openness to interpretation on different levels. For Sæbjörnsson, all artworks have always been alive and have co-created us as much as we created them. In other words, “art is an independent species evolving together with humans”. Sæbjörnsson was nominated for a Carnegie Art Award in 2010. He represented Iceland at the 57th Venice Biennale in 2017.