News release

 Omar Smari Kristinsson graduated from The Icelandic Collage of Arts and Crafts 1996 and from Fachhochschule Hannover – Dep. Visual Arts 1998.  During those years and since then he has, on the average, made two solo exhibitions pro year and taken place in 3 group exhibitions pro year.  In the meantime he has run a café/supermarked-bus in the icelandic highland and taken care of a meterological island and the animals living there.

Many of the works made by Ómar Smári deal with what the human mind is offered to consume and how that material is served.  Classificational systems and the mass media are common terms.  Often Ómar Smári takes a direct, physical part in these fields.

The works on the exhibition are an attempt to gain a glimpse of the world in the passing time, to compress the human horizon into one picture.  During the evening news, Ómar Smári drew everything happening on the screen, during that half an hour, as thoroughly as he could.  About 100 such “shnapshots” of the world are too be seen at the exhibition.

 Karl Johann Jonsson graduated from The Icelandic Collage of Arts and Crafts 1993
This exhibition is dedicated to my friends Smari and Nina and reflects somewhat the romantic view that I have of their life. They must have tremendous spiritual stability having the strenght to live together alone on an island in the middle of Isafjardardjup at the western part of the land for the winter with their friend, the weather-report machine.  Then in the summertime rush to the middle of the land to Landmannalaugar, wolloping around in nature and totally out of reach with the luxury of the big city apart from 2-3 days of the year.

Here we have Nina playing the role of a holy figure and Smari reflects the face of the fulfilled man, him who is the deep thinker, knows all and understands. The exhibitions is called People, trees and fruit : showing 5 oil paintings.

For more info check out : http://galleri.hlemmur.is