About
Habby Osk’s interests lies in basic physics - balance, movement, gravity, time and force. These concepts play an important role across her art practice as she creates sculptures, photography work and installations which test the limits of balance and stability using gravity and force, referencing impermanence and the contingency of an action - the precarious composition and the potential destruction that it contains as both balance and stability are very precise and fragile states, and both can be easily be disrupted. Her work displays a tension between movement and stillness. She experiments with placing objects in insecure situations to probe how far they can go without tipping over, to capture the moment of stillness before the looming collapse or the transformation over time. The choice of material depends on each project and are constantly changing. Often she combines permanent materials such as cement, wood and plaster with more impermanent materials such as jello, wax and inflated plastic bags that can create series of small changes or incidents in the work, which become significant enough to cause a larger and more important changes. The materials are lightly treated and the color palette is minimal. This simplicity allows for a focus on the tension created by the fragile structures, the fleeting moment and transformation over time.
Habby Osk is born and raised in Akureyri, Iceland, and lives and works in Brooklyn. Osk’s work has been exhibited around the world, including solo exhibitions in the US and Iceland, thereof two museum solo exhibitions at Kopavogur Art Museum (IS) and Akureyry Art Museum (IS), and numerous group exhibitions such as Lorimoto Gallery (US), Soho20 (US), Tina Kim Gallery (US), Grimmuseum (DE) and Re:Rotterdam (NL). She holds a MFA in Fine Arts from the School of Visual Arts in New York and a BFA in Fine Arts from the AKI ArtEz University of the Arts in The Netherlands. Osk is a three time recipient of the prestigious Artists’ Salaries from the Icelandic Centre of Research, currently a recipient of a 12 month Artists’ Salaries’ grant. She has as well received grants from The Icelandic Art Council Fund, The Icelandic Visual Art Copyright Association and MUGGUR. Habby is currently a resident at ISCP - International Studio & Curatorial Program in New York (11/1/19-4/30/20) and has been an artist in residence at the Vermont Studio Center (US), Hafnarborg Museum (IS) and P:142 (DE).