Tack’s canvases are constellations of marks formed from hours of looking outward across Iceland’s dramatic landscapes
and inward to trace the emotional journeys one goes on. Steeped in the atmosphere of the fjords, Tack’s paint seems to rise out of the earth.
Stem-like streaks dance on an oversaturated cadmium yellow horizon while punches of optimistic floral reds exhale across the canvas,
elsewhere dense mycorrhizal nests fester. Many canvases hold these conflicting states within them, as we all do,
making them like characters, Tack avatars, that take on the atmosphere of the room they are in.
Words by Jack Smurthwaite from press release duo exhibition And as always, the end is everything.
Ra Tack is a Belgian painter, living and working in Seyðisfjörður, Iceland. They hold a BA and MFA
from The Royal Academy of Fine Arts, KASK in Ghent, Belgium.
Selected solo exhibitions
Tell me I will be fine after all, Associate Gallery, Reykjavik (IS), Let Me Untangle Your Tenderness at IMT Gallery, London (2022); I
don’t know how to human in theatre of nature, Sláturhúsið, Egilstaddir (2020) and Still Life 1,
AreaA, Berlin (2020).
Selected group exhibitions
And as Always, the End is Everything (with Florence
Peake) at IMT Gallery, London (2023); Winter Lights Festival, Reykjavík (2022) and Ásmundarsalur,
Reykjavik (2021).
Ra’s work has been exhibited widely, including solo and group exhibitions in London, Ghent, Berlin,
New York, Copenhagen, and Marrakech.