Um dyggð hins dúnkennda tilgangsleysis (2023)

Gallery Mjólkurbúðin, Akureyri, Iceland

Akureyri, Iceland — Gallery Mjólkurbúðin presents Um dyggð hins dúnkennda tilgangsleysis (The Virtue of the Fluffy Pointlessness), a two-person exhibition by Kate Bae and Magnus Helgason.

Bringing together distinct yet complementary practices, Bae and Helgason develop a collaborative installation that examines the tension between minimalism and excess through material, process, and form. Grounded in drawing and painting, the exhibition extends into sculptural and spatial configurations, emphasizing process-driven approaches and the contingent nature of making.

Bae’s work incorporates peeled acrylic “paint skins,” spray paint, and reclaimed materials, while Helgason engages found elements including synthetic tiles, motorized components, metal, and glass. Their combined methodologies foreground experimentation, material responsiveness, and the suspension of predetermined outcomes.

The exhibition situates gestures of play, chance, and indeterminacy within broader frameworks of social hierarchy, political power, and cultural value. Five collaborative works, presented as book-based forms, articulate the exhibition’s central inquiry into “tilgangsleysis,” or pointlessness—proposed here not as absence, but as a generative condition that resists closure and invites open-ended interpretation.