16.10.2026
Lou Tromp, an intern at the museum, had a conversation with Ívar Glói Gunnarsson Breiðfjörð about his exhibition Slept All Day.
There is a fish in a fish-sized sofa. It looks strangely at home there. The fish has become assimilated into the object: an ordinary piece of furniture, scaled down to accommodate an aquatic animal. But stay with the image for a moment longer and it starts to fall apart. What is a fish doing in a sofa? Wouldn’t it be slimy? Wouldn’t it smell? Wouldn’t it be disgusting?
In Svaf Allan Daginn/Slept All Day, Ívar Glói Gunnarsson Breiðfjörð plays with the assumptions we bring to the things we see. The gallery seems to give the fish a place to belong, making an absurd image feel perfectly at ease. Outside this intentionally constructed space, perhaps the fish sculpture would look rather out of place. The exhibition leaves the visitor with more questions than answers, but Ívar Glói suggests that the answers may already be there. ‘’All the clues are there, you just have to look for them,’’ he says.
People have described the show as beautiful, a response that surprises the artist. Beauty was not what he was thinking about while making the works. One example is Lullaby, a set of black plywood stage steps of the kind used in theatres. Ívar Glói himself has worked dismantling concert productions, where objects such as these steps are designed to be practical rather than beautiful. They aren’t meant to be seen by anyone but the people on the stage. In the exhibition, however, the steps are spotless and untouched, showcased in a space full of natural light. Small stars are painted in glow-in-the-dark paint across them, turning an ‘ugly backstage’ object into something bold, unexpectedly decorative, and therefore impossible not to notice. ‘’I thought they would be anti-aesthetic,’’ he says. Instead, quite the opposite happened.
Stars are a recurring image throughout the exhibition. They are a familiar symbol of theatre and spectacle, appearing in Hollywood, cinema and on theatre stages. In this sense, the stars become another kind of theatrical gesture, perhaps even a small nod towards the façades that appear throughout the exhibition. But stars also belong to a very different setting: the bedroom. Ívar Glói compares them to the glow-in-the-dark stars a child might look at while lying awake in bed, something meant to soothe you into sleep.
Slept All Day, however, turns this image on its head. The viewer is left in a completely lit room with a constructed version of a night sky. ‘’It’s the opposite of being a kid and lying in bed,’’ Ívar Glói says. What might normally be comforting becomes a kind of façade: a night sky that is obviously constructed, theatricalised without actually becoming a spectacle. There is no darkness, no grand effect. Just a large white wall and a few small stars. And yet, ‘’People love the stars.’’
Ívar Glói has an interesting relationship with his work being considered beautiful or aesthetic. For the works exhibited in Slept All Day, becoming aesthetic was never really part of the intention. In Nighttime, the large white walls are punctured by small stars that let daylight through from the windows that are otherwise blocked by the walls. Ívar Glói expected the effect to be somewhat of a let-down. The walls are big, while the stars create only a very small effect, one that would make much more sense in the dark. And yet, in the bright white gallery space, the work becomes something else. People seem to subconsciously romanticise the white cube, and by extension, the stars, too.
What is interesting is that this seems to happen repeatedly, regardless of the intention behind the work. For his graduation project in 2023 at LUCA in Brussels, Ívar Glói made sleek, corporate-looking tables and paired them with old hammers he had collected from a flea market. He polished the hammers, removing the wear and tear that suggested their previous lives, until they became assimilated into the clean aesthetic of the tables. An object that had belonged to workers became a polished, almost fetishised object in a gallery.
Ívar Glói describes this as an attempt to ‘’nullify the possible backstory of whoever had the hammers before.’’ The history of an object can disappear when it is placed in a new context. The hammer stops being a tool that someone used and becomes an aesthetic object. The viewer is left to piece together what remains, looking for clues that might explain the object’s place in the work. As Ívar Glói describes it, trying to decipher an artwork and make sense of its details becomes a kind of game.
This idea of objects acquiring new identities connects to Ívar Glói’s broader interest in fictionalised realities: the ways places and objects are given a version of their past that feels convincing, even when it is not entirely accurate. For Ívar Glói, this is not necessarily a problem. He is not arguing that places should remain historically accurate. A city cannot simply freeze itself in the past; the way people live, build, and use materials changes. What interests him is the layer that gets added in the process: a new aesthetic that begins to stand in for the history underneath it.
Having studied at the Iceland University of the Arts (2011-2014) before completing his postgraduate studies at LUCA School of Arts in Brussels (2021-2023), Ívar Glói has experienced two very different art scenes. He describes the alternative art scene in Brussels as more restrained, with exhibitions that often communicate in a more cryptic way. Compared to Iceland, where the legacy of artists such as Dieter Roth and the group Súm helped shape a more conceptual and minimalist approach, the Brussels scene can feel, in his words, ‘’dry’’.
This difference is reflected in how Slept All Day might be received in each place. Here in Iceland, the exhibition has been seen as fresh, and even strange. The kind of art scene Ívar Glói encountered in Brussels does not exist here in quite the same way, although he points out that there are Icelandic artists whose work would fit comfortably within the Brussels art scene. Merging these two approaches to exhibiting art is clearly part of what has happened in Slept All Day. The exhibition offers clues, but rarely spells out how they should be read. How much guidance a viewer needs, and when its absence becomes part of the experience, remains an open question.
Photos by: Lou Tromp and Sisters Lumiére
Lou Tromp, an intern at the museum, had a conversation with Ívar Glói Gunnarsson Breiðfjörð about his exhibition Slept All Day.
There is a fish in a fish-sized sofa. It looks strangely at home there. The fish has become assimilated into the object: an ordinary piece of furniture, scaled down to accommodate an aquatic animal. But stay with the image for a moment longer and it starts to fall apart. What is a fish doing in a sofa? Wouldn’t it be slimy? Wouldn’t it smell? Wouldn’t it be disgusting?
In Svaf Allan Daginn/Slept All Day, Ívar Glói Gunnarsson Breiðfjörð plays with the assumptions we bring to the things we see. The gallery seems to give the fish a place to belong, making an absurd image feel perfectly at ease. Outside this intentionally constructed space, perhaps the fish sculpture would look rather out of place. The exhibition leaves the visitor with more questions than answers, but Ívar Glói suggests that the answers may already be there. ‘’All the clues are there, you just have to look for them,’’ he says.
People have described the show as beautiful, a response that surprises the artist. Beauty was not what he was thinking about while making the works. One example is Lullaby, a set of black plywood stage steps of the kind used in theatres. Ívar Glói himself has worked dismantling concert productions, where objects such as these steps are designed to be practical rather than beautiful. They aren’t meant to be seen by anyone but the people on the stage. In the exhibition, however, the steps are spotless and untouched, showcased in a space full of natural light. Small stars are painted in glow-in-the-dark paint across them, turning an ‘ugly backstage’ object into something bold, unexpectedly decorative, and therefore impossible not to notice. ‘’I thought they would be anti-aesthetic,’’ he says. Instead, quite the opposite happened.
Stars are a recurring image throughout the exhibition. They are a familiar symbol of theatre and spectacle, appearing in Hollywood, cinema and on theatre stages. In this sense, the stars become another kind of theatrical gesture, perhaps even a small nod towards the façades that appear throughout the exhibition. But stars also belong to a very different setting: the bedroom. Ívar Glói compares them to the glow-in-the-dark stars a child might look at while lying awake in bed, something meant to soothe you into sleep.
Slept All Day, however, turns this image on its head. The viewer is left in a completely lit room with a constructed version of a night sky. ‘’It’s the opposite of being a kid and lying in bed,’’ Ívar Glói says. What might normally be comforting becomes a kind of façade: a night sky that is obviously constructed, theatricalised without actually becoming a spectacle. There is no darkness, no grand effect. Just a large white wall and a few small stars. And yet, ‘’People love the stars.’’
Ívar Glói has an interesting relationship with his work being considered beautiful or aesthetic. For the works exhibited in Slept All Day, becoming aesthetic was never really part of the intention. In Nighttime, the large white walls are punctured by small stars that let daylight through from the windows that are otherwise blocked by the walls. Ívar Glói expected the effect to be somewhat of a let-down. The walls are big, while the stars create only a very small effect, one that would make much more sense in the dark. And yet, in the bright white gallery space, the work becomes something else. People seem to subconsciously romanticise the white cube, and by extension, the stars, too.
What is interesting is that this seems to happen repeatedly, regardless of the intention behind the work. For his graduation project in 2023 at LUCA in Brussels, Ívar Glói made sleek, corporate-looking tables and paired them with old hammers he had collected from a flea market. He polished the hammers, removing the wear and tear that suggested their previous lives, until they became assimilated into the clean aesthetic of the tables. An object that had belonged to workers became a polished, almost fetishised object in a gallery.
Ívar Glói describes this as an attempt to ‘’nullify the possible backstory of whoever had the hammers before.’’ The history of an object can disappear when it is placed in a new context. The hammer stops being a tool that someone used and becomes an aesthetic object. The viewer is left to piece together what remains, looking for clues that might explain the object’s place in the work. As Ívar Glói describes it, trying to decipher an artwork and make sense of its details becomes a kind of game.
This idea of objects acquiring new identities connects to Ívar Glói’s broader interest in fictionalised realities: the ways places and objects are given a version of their past that feels convincing, even when it is not entirely accurate. For Ívar Glói, this is not necessarily a problem. He is not arguing that places should remain historically accurate. A city cannot simply freeze itself in the past; the way people live, build, and use materials changes. What interests him is the layer that gets added in the process: a new aesthetic that begins to stand in for the history underneath it.
Having studied at the Iceland University of the Arts (2011-2014) before completing his postgraduate studies at LUCA School of Arts in Brussels (2021-2023), Ívar Glói has experienced two very different art scenes. He describes the alternative art scene in Brussels as more restrained, with exhibitions that often communicate in a more cryptic way. Compared to Iceland, where the legacy of artists such as Dieter Roth and the group Súm helped shape a more conceptual and minimalist approach, the Brussels scene can feel, in his words, ‘’dry’’.
This difference is reflected in how Slept All Day might be received in each place. Here in Iceland, the exhibition has been seen as fresh, and even strange. The kind of art scene Ívar Glói encountered in Brussels does not exist here in quite the same way, although he points out that there are Icelandic artists whose work would fit comfortably within the Brussels art scene. Merging these two approaches to exhibiting art is clearly part of what has happened in Slept All Day. The exhibition offers clues, but rarely spells out how they should be read. How much guidance a viewer needs, and when its absence becomes part of the experience, remains an open question.
Photos by: Lou Tromp and Sisters Lumiére
