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Jan van Munster is an artist from the Netherlands who came to San Diego as an artist-in-residence at Quint Krichman Projects in the early 1990s. His work deals with the concept of energy and his materials are varied enough to have different effects and address different aspects of the concept. In his series called Brainwaves, van munster uses neon, an invisible gas radiating color and light once put between the poles of – and +. These undulating lightforms are, in fact, human brainwaves, each work is an actual sign of its own energy. It is amazing to see how consistently each of van Munster’s works is charged twice: once with the abstract concept it embodies, once with the physical process of its creation. van Munster’s works have always been interactive, only being completed once engaged with the human senses. His materials have ranged from granite, to ice, to neon, and every time the effect is to stimulate the senses, as the aesthetic leans toward the minimal.

“van Munster’s notion of sculpture goes beyond the visual and the aesthetic properties of the material: appearance and sensory touch are not the only criteria for the effect produced by his sculptures. Sculpture perceived as an energetic process may appeal to all of the viewer’s senses, ultimately affecting even the power of imagination.”
— Peter Lodermeyer, Sculpture, May 2007, p. 41

“van Munster’s source of success… is the way the energy is made so palpable and so artful simultaneously.”
— Robert L. Pincus, San Diego Union, October 4, 1991

Quint Contemporary Art is pleased to present work by Birgir Andresson, Allan McCollum, Jan van Munster and a group of Mug Shot photographs by Anonymous Photographers.

Birgir Andrésson (b. 1955 – d.2007) The exhibition will feature one of the artist’s wall installations from a series entitled Icelandic Colors. Born in the Westmann Islands in 1955, Andrésson went on to study visual arts at the Icelandic Academy of the Arts and then received a graduate degree from the Jan Van Eyck Akademie in Maastricht in Holland.

Andrésson was especially preoccupied in his work with spoken language, and the communication of visual perception, which he explored through text portraits, drawings, wall installations and three-dimensional constructions. The ‘Icelandic Colours’ are one of the strangest and most contradictory subjects in Andresson’s art and, like so many of his themes, they turn up again and again in different contexts. In his text-paintings the text appears on a solid field of color which is identified in a caption in the corner: “Colours: Icelandic Pantone 173, Icelandic Pantone 533.” To begin with this was perhaps just characteristic irony, making fun of pseudo-national trends in interior decoration. Later, however, these colors became a sort of signature that Andresson could use to put his mark on almost any subject he chose.