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The work Garden -Strata is an immersive material performance, a staging of coloured liquid dripping onto a series of salt-coated rocks. Enclosed within an overture – a framework of proposals – the performance unfolded over a period of three months and offered a continued space of investigation of raw material.  Apart from a basic but influential structure, the elements were left to evolve on their own terms without further artistic intervention.

 

Programmed suspenders hanging from the ceiling release a splash of colored liquid onto the salt-encrusted rocks positioned underneath. The controlled drips penetrate the crystallized coat of salt and sustain the continuum of the process taking place. Due to the length of time taken by the mechanism of the work, the dynamic of the installation is interrupted throughout the duration of the exhibition, allowing the work to slowly evolve over time while clearly revealing the potential energy of the system’s construction. The nature in Tryggvadóttir’s Garden has been altered. It takes on unexpected forms when different materials meet and find their own course within the frame of the exhibition. The transformation process becomes evident, and the works are ever-changing in a process-based durational performance.

Nineteen stones were collected from an active mine in the alpine region of Bad Ischl. These stones rest upon a 20-meter-long stage coated with salt. The rocks, approximately 90 million years old, have been treated to varying degrees with salt from a regional salt mine. When the alpine region rose above sea level millions of years ago, vast areas of sea became trapped between the mountains, eventually drying up and leaving extensive deposits of salt to integrate into the geology. Certain sections of the rocks in the installation reveal their metamorphic history through compact layers of different minerals stacked within each rock.

Suspended from the ceiling, bottles contain a diluted blend of watercolor that drips onto the rocks every half an hour, gradually forming new formations atop the dense geological history below.