An installation in an old prison in Reykjavík. The piece shows us the everyday of the prisoner in cell 4.
“Finnur Arnar’s cell was not typical in comparison to the others because he took a strictly realistic, or objective, approach to the surroundings. In fact, it looked exactly like the cell of an inmate that had just left a moment before — the title of the work was “Back in a Moment.” Cigarette stubs in the ashtray along with a lot of clutter on the small table, bedclothes all in a tangle, a black bag of unwashed clothes under the bed, a small TV still switched on, a drawing of a young girl sent to her daddy, a letter just opened — every small detail a reference to the mind-numbing isolation. Finnur Arnar recently had a solo exhibition at the Living Art Museum where he took a similar approach, a strictly factual reference to the lives of specific individuals; factual listings of the main events of their lives, a CV of everyday existence; enlarged photocopies of pay-cheques, as if they were a defiant gesture: “This is who I am!”” (Gunnar J. Árnason in the Nordic art magazine Siksi, winter 1996.)
