One Thing and Another, and Then Some More'.

Hreinn Fridfinnsson's work is as eclectic as it is idiosyncratic, but there are certain constants that remain throughout his career of over 50 years, and among them is his use of the objet trouvé, that is, taking something from what is known (in a questionably abbreviated form) as the "real" world and recontextualising it in such a way that it can be considered (and this remains questionable) as art. But the way in which Fridfinnsson makes use of this strategy eschews the kind of irony or critique that is usually associated with it and instead tends towards the sudden revelation of the unusual in the everyday, relying specifically on the concrete character of the 'real' as a portal in and out of something more ethereally and ephemerally 'unreal' but which has, in fact, always been within the 'real', hidden or perhaps hiding, like the mysterious huldufólk [the hidden people] that populate his native Iceland. This aspect of Fridfinnsson's work is evident in his current exhibition One Thing and Another, and Then Some More at Galería Elba Benítez, a show comprising significant works from several decades of the artist's career.