1990 - 2023
1987 is an edition of four silkscreen prints. Each of which incorporates images taken from advertisements for one of the four banks that would merge to become Íslandsbanki in 1990. These ads are taken from the 1987 issue of Bankablaðið – a paper that seems to have circulated among banking personnel. The images presented in these ads are intriguing in several ways. One being the disjointed nature by which fashion and print technology intermingle to give off the distinct feeling of a future promise embodied in an image now trapped in the past. This is particularly interesting as it relates to advertisements for banks with their emphasis on balancing consumer novelty with the kind of institutional stability that banks are supposedly meant to exude. This sense of disjointedness also applies to the banks themselves. It seems that some of them were already insolvent when these ads were being placed – which adds an interpretive layer to the reading of such images.
Silkscreen print
84 x 64 cm
Ads from the banking sector are framed by another layer based on a digital composition. One that depicts a model of a building constructed in 1987, which is elongated and leans against another architectural detail. The composition is stylistically in line with the idea of architecture being a visual referent to a point in time. It can be understood as an exploration of the relationship between architecture and the conditions guiding finance at the time of its construction. Specifically, the gesture of elongating a model of a building constructed in 1987 can be considered a formal gesture by which to explore the relationship between inflation, currency devaluation, and home equity – through purely visual means.
