POSTCARDS FROM ICELAND
BRIAN HITSELBERGER
11/10/23-12/23/23
The Weather Station is pleased to present Postcards from Iceland, a group exhibition of mail art, risograph prints, and works on paper. Originally conceived when artist/curator Brian Hitselberger traveled through Iceland during the Summer of 2023, Postcards from Iceland features works created by the artists he encountered during his time there.
This exhibition borrows its title from the 1937 book Letters from Iceland, a collaboratively written travelogue by W.H. Auden and Louis MacNeice. Composed during the authors’ trek through the newly-sovereign state, the book features a series of letters written in verse describing both the Icelandic landscape and people in irreverent, largely unflattering terms. Long descriptions of the general boredom and discomfort endured by the British travelers are only occasionally interrupted by more specific complaints of second-rate hotels, charmless meals, and the high costs of imported booze.
Nearly one hundred years after publication, Hitselberger revisits the collaborative travel diary in Postcards from Iceland, employing mail art and other visual documents to create a variegated portrait of a distant island widely celebrated as both a haven and inspiration for contemporary artists. During the Summer of 2023, Hitselberger traveled to northern Iceland for an artist residency, spending one month living and working with a network of international artists, many of whom were in Iceland for the first time. While there, he worked with these artists to produce small works on paper in a variety of media, each in response to their individual impressions of Iceland’s landscape and culture. Alongside them, Hitselberger created his own “travel notes” in the form of drawings and collages, as well as passages lifted from his own reading and research. Reflections on the geography, customs, weather, and people were gathered from a host of voices, each of whom complements (or complicates) the other. Far from the critiques catalogued by Auden and MacNeice, the artists and writers in Postcards from Iceland document a profound sense of awe, enchantment, and sense of belonging found within Iceland, a place that serves as both subject and inspiration for their work.
Just before returning Hitselberger dropped everything at a post office in Blonduós, where it traveled across the Atlantic to his mailbox in Lafayette. The trans-Atlantic marks of the postal service are visible on each piece- evidence of the many unseen hands and mechanisms at work to connect these places. In this exhibition, Hitselberger has installed the postcards, mailers, photographs and collages in a “drift” throughout the gallery: a gesture towards this transatlantic crossing, as well as shifting perceptions of place over time.
Postcards from Iceland features work by Elena Banfield (CA), Elisa Faires (US), Sarah Feldbloom (CA), Makayla Gay (US), Grit Reiss (DE), Andrew Schwartz (US), Hrafnhildur Sigurðardóttir (IS), Guido Sturndrup (DE), and Tori Walters (US). This exhibition was funded in part by an Individual Artist Grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, made available through The Arts Fed in Lafayette, Indiana.
Brian Hitselberger is an artist originally from North Carolina. He has exhibited his paintings and works on paper throughout the US, including recent solo and two-person exhibitions at Antenna Gallery in New Orleans, the Lyndon House in Athens, and {poem88} in Atlanta. His writing has appeared in BURNAWAY, the Ruckus, floromancy, and the Flagpole, among other publications. In 2019, Hitselberger co-curated Monologue, a survey of artists working with print, at the Mason-Scharfenstein Museum of Art.
He has held residencies at the Elsewhere Artists Collaborative, the Hub City Arts Initiative, the Hambidge Center for the Arts, and the NES Artist Residency. He has received funding for his work from the Georgia Council for the Arts, the Willson Center for the Humanities, the Andy Warhol Foundation and the Indiana Arts Commission. He publishes artist books, projects and zines under the imprint Two Steps Press, most recently Slender Intuition, a collection of essays exploring artist’s block. He received a BFA in Printmaking from Tulane University, and an MFA in Painting from the University of Georgia, and is currently Senior Lecturer in the Rueff School of Design, Art and Performance at Purdue University. He is one of the founding members of The Weather Station.