Baldur Helgason
Bizarre cartoons, funny and disconcerting
“Baldur Helgason’s paintings reference modern life with both humour and a sense of haunting.”
Modern life is comical and unsettling. Just like caricatures by Baldur Helgason. Often, they’re in the style of cartoons from the 1950s – like Betty Boop and Mickey Mouse. The figures are clown-like, grappling with tricky spaces, smoking, or painting. On the surface, the oil paintings are playful. But they deliberately confront the ambient anxiety of society. Helgason starts with a “blank canvas and puts down a layer of Burnt Umber.” Then, he layers pigments of bright vivid colours over it. His artistic inspiration comes from “the Masters style of painting skin tones. Like Rembrandt or Sargent...
Modern life is comical and unsettling. Just like caricatures by Baldur Helgason. Often, they’re in the style of cartoons from the 1950s – like Betty Boop and Mickey Mouse. The figures are clown-like, grappling with tricky spaces, smoking, or painting. On the surface, the oil paintings are playful. But they deliberately confront the ambient anxiety of society. Helgason starts with a “blank canvas and puts down a layer of Burnt Umber.” Then, he layers pigments of bright vivid colours over it. His artistic inspiration comes from “the Masters style of painting skin tones. Like Rembrandt or Sargent.” Like Helgason, their portraits reflected on society in the 17th-century and Edwardian-era.
The strange cartoons speak to the saturation and isolation of modern technology. The images highlight the need for greater connection in society. Untitled (2022) shows this feeling – it places humour and fear together. He is trapped in a small space, unable to move. The figures' tears show the lonely nature of digital platforms in the 21st century. Helgason says “we’re connected through social media, but removed from each other. It makes us depressed, but dependent on dopamine highs.” His art is both morose and jovial – a true reflection of modern life.
Baldur Helgason (he/him) was born in Iceland, 1984. He currently lives and works in Chicago in the United States.
Settling in Chicago was never Helgason’s plan, he wanted to “finish school and be a Bohemian in Europe. Drink coffee, drink wine, smoke cigarettes and talk about art with some dead guys who aren’t around anymore.”
He won the San Francisco Weekly Mastermind Award in 2012. It was just a year after graduating from his Master’s at the Academy of Arts in SF.
