Spessi: Location

In her catalogue essay to this remarkable new collection of photographs of the Icelandic landscape and other abandoned or emptied-out environments there, "Art in America"'s Stephanie Cash writes, "There is a sense of comforting ordinariness that pervades the work of Icelandic artist Spessi. His subjects aren't grandly majestic or fashionably downtrodden. They just "are." In various series Spessi has photographed Icelandic sites or people. But his are not the iconic images of tourist postcards. Instead, he captures the largely overlooked scenery you might pass on the way to the tourist hotspots--gas stations, construction sites, empty landscapes with snow-capped mountains in the distance. Printed on a large scale, the works imbue their subjects with a grandiosity that belies their ordinariness." Whether capturing a lone tree in a barren landscape, an empty kitchen or a humble office building, all of Spessi's work infers "the presence of humans, whether in memory or in anticipation."