The Brooklyn Rail

With strange and wonderful new species of hybrid Icelandic flora invented by the artists; eccentric versions of biological forms like cells and pods; abundant scents and mostly subtle sounds, the multisensory Fischersund: Faux Flora is one of the most innovative and compelling exhibitions I’ve experienced in a very long time.

Organized in five consecutive parts in which the stages of a human life (birth, childhood, adolescence, adulthood, death) mirror those of plant development (germination, growth, flowering, seed formation, seed dispersal) this immersive exhibition—inspired by Iceland, its landscape and native plants, and the artists’ experience in the country, while utilizing science and botanical treatises— links humans and nature and feels like a marvelous yet unsteadying (and sometimes creepy) elsewhere. Moving through it—preferably slowly—while registering its myriad surprises, inhaling its varied scents through the successive stages, among them milk, fresh laundry, grass stains, mascara, cigarette smoke, tangled roots, cardboard boxes, ash, and blackened earth, feels like a voyage of discovery.

Exquisite, hand-painted gelatin silver prints of sculpted flowers and pods are dispersed through the show. The “seeds” of one pod are the colorful balls and baubles that delight infants; a somber, seemingly crumbling black and gold pod is borderline scary. Elaborate plants abound, in videos and sculptures. Dark backgrounds with small circles suggesting planets and stars make the video ones seem unearthly and cosmic, although they always connect with complex human experience, the artists’ and our own.

Remarkably, this is the first-ever exhibition for the Fischersund Art Collective, although its members are hardly art novices and have collaborated with one another for years, just not as a full-on group. The collective consists of four siblings, each with their own talents and expertise which really mesh here: musician/artist/self-taught perfumer Jónsi (he’s also the frontman, singer, and guitarist in the great Icelandic band Sigúr Rós) and artists Inga Birgisdóttir, Lilja Birgisdóttir, and Sigurrós Birgisdóttir.

They are also partners in the one-of-a-kind shop Fischersund, in an historical building in downtown Reykjavik, which purveys Jónsi’s unique scents, and is a key to this exhibition, including how the scents are themselves hybrids, made of natural stuff like moss, pine and Sitka spruce but also synthetic molecules. Visual art, some made by the sisters, and music are fundamental in the shop, but the focus is on the scents. Now, artworks have been freed up and amped up to become a whole environment, coupled with scents and sound. Gender equity figures in. Jónsi has long been a rock star and more recently an acclaimed visual and sonic artist. Now the three sisters are also front and center, although all of the artists are adamant about collectivity, and insist that specific artworks not be attributed to anyone of them.

Wonderment happens from the get-go when one enters the darkened space to encounter plausible yet fantastical plants (scroll down for videos) animated and seemingly alive, in video loops on sizable monitors, each with its own soundscape, unique, handcrafted scent that viewers are encouraged to sniff from a nearby resin bell jar, title and description. Each was meticulously sculpted on a computer in Cinema 4D.

From a distance, the pink and white petals of one swaying plant, Gervineglur (Fake Nails)— all works are from 2024—in the Flowering/Adolescence section look like, well, petals but from up close fingernail extensions, which is jarring; body adornment in the body of a plant. The scent suggests nail polish remover. Other spectacular plants evoke teenage awkwardness, excitation, and outsize emotions as bodies change and a fresh life assembles. Sleikur (Make Out) shows two liplike flowers “kissing” with a strand of gnarly mucus stretching between them (according to the label, the scent involves “oozing and dripping sugary nectar”), while Trúnó inná klósetti (Bathroom Heart-to-Heart) shows another flower “crying” with teardrop-shaped droplets dangling on long strands.

In the Seed Formation/Adulthood section, the theme is...storage. Growing older, moving, and sometimes having children inevitably results in accumulation; “as responsibility grows,” the wall text says, “things gather.” One plant sports miscellaneous flotsam and includes pieces of cedar; another features China, the rarely used heirloom stuff passed down through generations. Its sound suggests tinkling porcelain.

This is a family show (another remarkable thing about it) suffused with family history and memories, yet it feels so generous and open to others, including those who have never set foot in Iceland. With Skráma (Scratch), in the Growth/Childhood section, two beige flowers seemingly made of Band-Aids are next to red and blue stalks. Vigorous outdoor play—before moving to Reykjavik the artists and their family lived in rural Iceland—inevitably results in scratches and scrapes. “A colorful curiosity,” the wall text announces, “can yield cuts and bruises, quickly forgotten in an ever-changing existence.” Immersion in nature starting early on has been enduringly influential for the artists, including for this exhibition.

Exquisite, hand-painted gelatin silver prints of sculpted white (maybe dead) flowers protruding from recognizably American products subtly connect the artists’ childhood with Iceland altogether. Due to a large U.S. military base, American products flooded into the country; it became normal and Icelandic to use Johnson’s Baby Oil and eat Hershey’s Kisses and Froot Loops. These photographs evoke the artists’ childhood but also whopping national changes, with the remote island nation, which endured centuries of poverty and deprivation during which consumer goods were sparse, growing ever more involved with the world, economically, politically and culturally.

Throughout, refreshingly idiosyncratic, poetic and personable wall texts and labels are an integral part of the show. They are also a total pleasure to read, and the same goes for the quirky, yet spot-on descriptions of Fischersund products. The label for Veskið hennar ömmu (Grandmother’s Purse) in the concluding Seed Dispersal/Death section enigmatically reads “Leather fingers curl around coins, cough drops, lipstick and tissue paper.” The humdrum contents—no doubt mysterious for the artists as kids—of their grandmother’s purse are now tucked into the pod of a plant with curving tendrils and vivid, yet muted colors; they’ve been absorbed into eternal cycles of growth and decay. Like so much else in the show, this work is playful and absurd, but also powerful, tender and deeply touching.

Across the room is Sinubruni (Field Fire), a huge, horizontal video showing a turf landscape, tufted with tawny grass, undulating like the ocean—turf and ocean are chief characteristics of Icelandic nature—and encapsulating the volatile country’s sheer mutability (earthquakes, volcanoes). With a soundtrack in turn mournful and ecstatic, hushed and soaring, featuring Jónsi’s extraordinary voice, this work is downright mesmerizing.

A hallmark of this go for broke show is its emotional impact, how it induces amazement, unease, mirth, sorrow and delight, often simultaneously. Likewise impactful were two transfixing, sold-out “scented concerts” during the opening period, which underscored that the collective is also a community involving not just the siblings but also family members, friends and colleagues. Live music by Jónsi, Sin Fang (Sindri Már Sigfússon), and Kjartan Holm, videos from the exhibition, scents, theatrical performance and the spoken word (Inga’s and Sindri’s young daughter Snjólaug endearingly and courageously recited, in Icelandic, a poem by Jónsi about childhood) again felt like a voyage, an especially soulful one, and many audience members—I observed—were in tears. The artists and Chief Curator Leslie Anne Anderson—all of whom took considerable risks—are to be commended for this exceptional show.