The art of Halldór Ásgeirsson can be identified in different versions of the artist ´s experiences with spontaneous writing, performance, and the natural materials of fire, wind, water, and light that he began to work with early in his career. The four elements, were considered the roots of all matter. In alchemy, each plant had its place, each colour its own meaning, each element a role. Fire is a symbol of transformation and creation - water of emotions and poetics. Halldór believes that energy is the foundation of the world and in all his art existence appears as the diverse projection of this creative power. He express through different media such as drawings and paintings, photos, poetry, performances, installations, environmental works etc.

Reflecting on Halldór´s career it becomes clear that nature from the beginning has been a super-ego for the artist: nature, not as a subject - but the man´s environment. The experience and the insight awakened through that encounter are for him an endless subject and source for creative production. The theme of his works is often based on the natural characteristics of his country like the volcanic activities but in 1992 Halldór began to weld lava stones. When the lava is heated it become red and fluid in few seconds and melts before finally transform into a black glossy enamel.

Halldór Ásgeirsson is also a traweller and he systematically turn his journeys into a creative source and transform his memories from them into a visual world which appear in his art works. Ever since Ásgeirsson embarked upon his first journey, in his early twenties, his art has been characterized by a constant rycycling of impressions which he registered in the diaries he have kept while trawelling like in the Middle East, Mexico, Japan and China. However, his works rarely come into being during the journey itself; rather, the journey functions as an inexhaustible source of flashbacks to earlier times. For example the idea for Ásgeirsson´s flag works, which he first exhibited on the mountain Úlfarsfell in 1983, stems from his experience in Nepal, where he got completely lost in the Himalayas but then found a path which took him to a hill where Buddhist flags fluttered. The flag works are timeless, transportable installations which show how creative flow feeds off experience and how Ásgeirsson´s visual imagery and performances span his entire career from the first drawings in his first notebook, which can be reworked time and time again.

Æsa Sigurjónsdóttir art historian.
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