The base of a mountain, where it meets normal ground, is a weighty site. Furthest away from the peak or summit, it’s a place both protected and vulnerable. You could say it is an unstable location that cannot escape, but also highlights the things in its surroundings – for instance when humans come into play. Humans plant trees, build stone walls, dig drains around their houses in unison with mountains, in hopes to maintain stability. Ye, the ever-lurking possibility that pieces or screes might loosen and will most likely descend or tumble down. Falling from their mountain ridges they land in meadows, river beds and valleys below. Sometimes, on their way, they hop or washout, leaving dotted trails and marks like bites out of the chocolatey soil below. Where will they land? And what is left missing at the point of break, descended and gone elsewhere? Some head downhill for the sea, wade in the ground, others land in fields below, stick out like sore thumbs or randomly-placed glacial erratics, some dive deep, deep down. In a large field of clay, spotted by the eyes of those humans. Others push up to the surface, ground-stained, and are pests for those tending to those exact fields.
Up, up high, Tumble down, down. Later plucked up.

Sindri’s work focuses in on materials in-reach, whether sourced, found or spotted; like tree parts, wood, steel and clay-stained stone. In picking them up, meeting them where they are at and letting them speak as much for themselves as possible, he collaborates in minimal, but direct, sometimes physical, intentions with the found materials points towards the human. Places can be interpreted in volumes, multitudes, and here below the Nýpurhyrna mountain in Breiðafjörður fjord, Sindri does so in new kinds of erratics, rock-human hybrids and plucked tree parts. Vulnerability is taken by human-led gesture that only slight changes what is at hand, and in doing so, reinforces making, tasting or trying as ways of relating to the new environment one sometimes finds themselves in.

Sindri Leifsson was born in 1988 in Reykjavík. He completed an MFA degree from the University of the Arts in Malmö, Sweden in 2013 and a BA from the Iceland University of the Arts in 2011. Symbols and the transformation of the material wood are repeated steps in Sindri’s work, where the environment and society also come into play. More often than not, the materials stand alone and are raw, mixed with highly processed and polished surfaces. He has been active in exhibitions for the last few years, among those, his solo exhibition in Ásmundarsalur Næmi, næmi, næm and a group show in the Living Art Museum 2021 Does the soul know about the subject? Sindri’s works can be found in the collections of the National Gallery of Iceland, ASÍ Art Museum and the Living Art Museum, as well as private collections.