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In Transit, the Geometry of Passage, artist Erla S. Haraldsdóttir's second solo exhibition at Gallery Gudmundsdottir, further develops a site-responsive proposition in her paintings that represent the space itself where her art is exhibited. One of the central works of Transit, the Geometry of Passage, is the oil on canvas triptych Around the Corner (2025-2026), which takes the Gallery space on Joachimstrasse as its cue. Haraldsdóttir projects the reality of the forms and lines in the central canvas outwards, providing viewers with a double of the space they encounter the paintings within, and showing viewers the possibilities of color.

In addition to the meditations on color and light in painting, the artist is also exhibiting drawings on paper. These works, with graphite and gold and silver leaf accents, emphasize the shifting nature of light and its dramatic relationship to color and surface; the smaller-format drawings inform the paintings, and vice versa. Transit invites contemplation, reflection, and more by showing the tension of the artist's vision of the white cube and the white cube itself.

This site-responsive mode of painting, which Haraldsdóttir now shows in Berlin, was exhibited for the first time at the close of 2025 at the Origins Centre Museum, Wits University, Johannesburg, South Africa. That exhibition featured several large-scale paintings that produced an uncanny effect of doubling the space by displaying them within the space they depicted.

The majority of the works present a transit of light and color in what is a standard white cube gallery. The artist considers the passage of time to observe, create, and inhabit spaces. Rendered in unconventional colors and hues, the recognizable geometry of modernist architectural form is enhanced and edified.

Text by Dr. Craniv Boyd.