The art of Guðný Kristmanns first emerged during the final stages of new expressionism or „new painting“, as it was termed in Iceland, during the last decade of the 20th century. The new expressionists interest in existential issues, the political landscape and the shortcomings of modern capitalist society gradually gave way to more private, suggestive and fantastic concerns among young painters. Art goes around in circles; for these are characteristics that we find in the work of Kandinsky the visionary, Klee the magician and the Surrealists, who found it imperative to bring man`s hidden desires into the open, however unspeakable: let it all hang out. Lastly, one should mention the abstract-expressionists of yore, both the American painters of primeval myths and the Scandinavian COBRA-painters, who shared an interest in all art that was original, counter, spare. Most of these artists also tend to see painting in existential terms, whereby the canvas becomes an arena for constant self-invention.

In the light of her obvious talents, Guðný Kristmanns might easily have become a producer of fashionably wild and colourful landscape-based abstractions, the kind that many people like to hang in their modern apartments. Instead she has turned her paintings into instruments for an exploration of the „naked“ psyche that is arguably more candid than what we are used to. She is a firm believer in the value of the spontaneous and accidental, and the formal/rhytmical vagaries arising from the unexpected. And like the Surrealists she puts great store by her dreams. It is out of the spontaneous and the unexpected, as well as out of her dreams, that she fashions the imagery that she transfers to her canvases, without any preliminary drawing.

It is this transfer, the way Guðný Kristmanns takes control of her inspiration and turns it into a vehicle for self-invention, that sets her apart in the context of modern Icelandic painting. A few years ago, she mentioned in an article that she regarded the creation of art and the creation of human life – conception, pregnancy and birth – as essentially analogous processes. In her later writings and utterances, her analyses of her creativity have increasingly veered in the direction of frankly erotic metaphors. The creative impulse is described in terms of carnal desire, seen as „sweet longing born within the body“, it is followed by a „dissolution of the self“, an obvious reference to the ecstacy of coitus. The process reaches its climax and then peters out, and the artist/lover is left with a feeling of depletion and doubt: „The mind begins to think in terms of new solutions, better than the previous ones.“

In locating the act of creation in the body, Guðný Kristmanns has cited the theories of Derrida and Nietzsche, both of whom posited a link between creativity and sexuality. At one stage Derrida linked the source of creative thought specifically with the female body and earlier Nietzsche had likened the productive mind to the womb. Froucault`s theories would also have some relevance here, since he wrote important tracts on the liberating aspect of sexual acts, especially „prohibited“ or potentially dangerous acts. According to Foucault, such acts are essential to the liberating of the modern psyche, imprisoned by a repressive society, as well as to truly unfettered creativity.

To be sure, Guðný Kristmanns is by no means the only female artist using sexual imagery in her work. In recent years, there has been much discussion of the sexual content of works by the British artists Tracy Emin and Sarah Lucas. Comparison between Guðný Kristmanns` paintings and the work of her British contemporaries is instructive. More often than not, Emin`s and Lucas pieces are characterized by a cynical attitude to sex, even disgust at the whole dirty business of it.  Guðný Kristmanns paintings are an uninhibited celebration of lust, an arena where the male and the female elements meet on an equal basis, true to what D.H.Lawrence called their „animal instincts“. Her colour palette is flaming hot, her drawing trembles with nervous tension, swollen vaginal forms vie with engorged phalli, eventually metamorphosing into a plethora of biomorphic forms in a creative orgy that extends over the entire canvas. Texture playes a greater role in the artist`s works than before, but it is deployed for sensual effect rather than structural. The canvas takes on the appearance of delicately brushed, blushing or bruised flesh, what William Blake called the „lineaments of satisfied desire“.

At the same time, Guðný Kristmanns is keenly aware of the sheer absurdity of sexual passion. This is brought out in frequent flashes of outrageous humor. In her works bisexual beings are made to quiver with unfulfilled desire, the male and female sexual organs may turn into pathetic caricatures of themselves and in at least one instance, one of her canvases, in the throes of ecstacy, is made to call out. But our recognition of this absurdity is a precondition of the only sensuality that matters, the mutual communication of two beings that arises from the centre of their existence.

Adalsteinn Ingólfsson