Football Pitch Areas

2018

In the summer of 2019, I wandered into a group show at the i8 Gallery in Reykjavík and was happily surprised to see a new work by Karin: a cut-out of artificial turf from a football pitch titled Penalty Area. My mind wandered through her older works, through art history and personal references. I was trying to place it. Her work made of artificial turf in MoMA, half indoors and half outdoors, with people lying in the sun on the outer half. The red circle indicating the center of gravity in Münster and a woven carpet in a room in Berlin, revealing it’s architectural floorplan.
Karin is a football fan. She has made a point of reacting to given situations and playing with them, and she likes to invent games. Football is an intriguing sport with its strategies and rules. As these thoughts cross my mind, I am invited to step on the work. Suddenly I’m on an island, a green one with geometrical lines that define areas. Given this, I wonder whether I am standing on the right spot. I think of my teenage son whopractices the sport. I think of helping him with school geometry and from there I’m taken to a much-loved work by Karin at my home. This is a Patina Painting, a small primed canvas I kept in my son’s crib that he enjoyed biting and chewing on. One day I took it and hung it on a wall. From that moment, the work was given the title Ragnar Steinn’s Oral Stage. In this work as in so many of Karin’s works, the spectator becomes an active participant. In the case of Penalty Area, one may enter with one’s mind and / or one’s feet.

Text: Ingólfur Arnarsson

Presented in exhibitions

i8 Gallery, Reykjavík, 2019
/SAC, Bucharest, 2026