Jóhannes S. Kjarval

Kjarvalsstaðir

These works extend across the period during which the painter Jóhannes S. Kjarval was active. In examining Kjarval's journey, and comparing it to the works of his contemporaries, it is possible to see the various ways art changes and evolves. The prevailing spirit of each era is reflected in differing shifts in style, and the artworks provide insight into the artists' inspirations, their surroundings and circumstances. Initially, a romantic view of nature predominated, but symbolism soon after made its way into the narrative, and the first steps were taken towards breaking away from naturalistic imagery.

In this exhibition, you can see artworks by Icelandic artists that span approximately six decades following the turn of the 20th century. 

Kjarval was born in 1885 and died in 1972. Between these points in time lies a significant period in cultural history and global society. This was a period of profound social transformation, industrialisation, urban development and technological advancement. Icelandic artists traveled abroad for education, returned home with fresh ideas, and were inspired by the currents and movements they encountered in Europe. In this sense, artists truly are not isolated islands in world history, but rather engage with various circumstances, innovations, revolutions and conflicts through their works.

As contemporary values embedded themselves in Icelandic society, the subjects and methods of artists evolved. Traditional artistic boundaries were shattered, and abstraction found its place. The then present era left its mark on Icelandic society, as is evident in the progress and diversity of artists' creative endeavors, and in the lifelong work of Kjarval.

In 1973, a year following Kjarval's death, Kjarvalsstaðir was inaugurated and named in his honor. Kjarval is one of the most beloved artists of the nation and his works have been exhibited here for half a century. Kjarval‘s works and those of other artists in this exhibition come from the collection of Reykjavik Art Museum, with the exception of Kjarval's famous _Mountain Milk_ (_Fjallamjólk_), one of the artist's most renowned pieces, which is currently on loan from ASÍ Art Museum.

Kjarval and the 20th Century: When Modernity Anchored

Ásmundur Sveinsson

Myndhöggvarinn að störfum á vinnustofu sinni.

Ásmundarsafn

Sculptor Ásmundur Sveinsson worked in different materials. He carved wood, cut stone, shaped clay, transferred forms to concrete, in addition to working with iron and found materials. Many of his best-known works are enlarged and placed in public space around the city. His works were created in relentless experimentation in the studio where he allowed material, content and space work hand in hand. The sculptures are either figurative or abstract, as Ásmundur went through various periods in his artistic creation. In the exhibition, we go back in time and into Ásmundur's studio. We get a sense of what happened behind the scenes in the artist's search for the appropriate completion for the ideas that emerged.

 In the exhibition, we go back in time and into Ásmundur's studio.

Wonderland was the name of the next farm to the place in Laugardalur where Ásmundur built his studio, the "dome" in Sigtún. He lived here with his family, built and developed unique facilities for artistic creation. The house was partially rebuilt and opened as an art museum and sculpture garden after Ásmundur's death over 40 years ago. Reykjavík Art Museum's aim ever since has been to show his work in all its variety and to provide a platform for a younger generation of artists to show their own work in the context of his heritage.

Ásmundur Sveinsson (1893–1982) was one of the pioneers of Icelandic sculpture. He studied at the Swedish Academy of Arts in Stockholm, spent several years in Paris and travelled through Greece and Italy. Ásmundur always remained loyal to the position that art had a mission for the people and belonged among them. He was called the folk poet in art, and without a doubt, that ideal is rooted in his attitude to life as much as in the sculptural tradition.

Ásmundur Sveinsson: Wonderland

Erró

Hafnarhús

The Reykjavik Art Musem houses the most extensive collection of Erró's works and exhibitions from the Erró collection are a regular fixture at the Hafnarhús site of the Reykjavík Art Museum, with the purpose of giving as clear an image as possible of the diverse character of the artist's works.

Erró is one of the few Icelandic artists who has gained a foothold in the international art scene.

This exhibition is a comprehensive overview of the artist's colourful career that has made use of various media in the visual arts. Within it you will find everything from performances, video works, graphics, multiples and collages, to larger works in public spaces and paintings of all scales.

The artist Erró, born Guðmundur Guðmundsson in 1932 in Ólafsvík, West Iceland, was among the most prominent figures of the European avant-garde of the 1960s. In the history of art of that period, his name is associated not only with the renewal of pictorial figuration, due to his invention of narrative collage-paintings, but also with the Happenings movement and experimental cinema. Although his work is often, rightly, attached to artistic groups like Surrealism, Narrative Figuration or Pop art, it cannot be reduced to any one of them.

Erró: Remix - including a selection of Scapes

Guðrún Kristjánsdóttir

A picture of Guðrún Kristjánsdóttir´s work 

Guðrún has carved out a unique place in Icelandic art with works that explore the relationship between nature and man, shaped by the weather and light in Iceland. She approaches nature as a living force, where stillness and power meet and unexpected beauty emerges in humble moments.

Guðrún Kristjánsdóttir's exhibition in the West Hall of Kjarvalsstaðir brings the vastness of nature closer to us.

Guðrún's work reflects a constant search for balance and captures both the small and the vast in the landscape. In her paintings, nature appears as an ever-changing process where transformation and movement are in constant collaboration. By connecting different materials and methods – videos, light, reflections, rhymes and music – a place and time is created where perception itself becomes part of the work. In recent years, she has worked with materials from the environment – ​​rocks, minerals and coal (surtabrandur) – and created works that carry with them the legacy of geological history. The exhibition spans works from Guðrún's decades-long career and provides a comprehensive picture of the artist's tireless interest in capturing our experience of nature - from tiny drops of water to misty mountain peaks, the blue of the distance and light that changes at every moment. The exhibition connects nature, perception, and time, evoking an experience that is both visual and emotional – a moment to pause and feel connected to the environment.

A short bio of the artist:
Guðrún Kristjánsdóttir was born in 1950 and studied art at the École des Beaux-Arts in Aix-en-Provence, France. She held her first solo exhibition in Kjarvalsstaðir in 1986 and has since exhibited widely, both in Iceland and abroad, including in Europe, the United States and Asia. Guðrún has worked as an artist for over four decades and also as a curator, editor and lecturer. She lives and works in Reykjavík and at Hlöðuberg on Skarðsströnd. The exhibition Traces springs from the book Bláleiðir, which Guðrún wrote together with Oddný Eir Ævarsdóttir and Snæfríð Þorsteinsdóttir, based on the artist's life's work.

Guðrún Kristjánsdóttir: Traces

Sara Riel

Halldór Ásgeirsson

Finnur Arnar Arnarson

Ásta Fanney Sigurðardóttir

Amanda Riffo

Unnar Örn J. Auðarson

The exhibition features a variety of works that bear the marks of experimentation and the creativity that took place while the artists worked in the museum. The project was conceived as a living dialogue between artist, space and viewer — and the remains that are now on display are both traces, memories and new interpretations of what was created.

The exhibition Remnants in  Ásmundarsafn museum presents works by six artists who have stayed in the museum's studio in a special project called Wonderland- work in Progress, which was ongoing during fall-winter of 2025-2026. Ssix artists were given the opportunity to work in close connection with the museum's space, the spirit of Ásmundur Sveinsson and its daily activities.

The exhibition features work by:
Unnar Örn, Ásta Fanney Sigurðardóttir, Amanda Riffo, Halldór Ásgeirsson, Sara Riel and Finnur Arnar Arnarsson. 
The remainder highlights diverse perspectives and working methods, but together the works form a vibrant whole that reflects the artists' time in the museum and opens up new ways of perceiving Ásmundarsafn and its surroundings.


Wonderland: Remnants

Wonderland: Open Workshop offers children, families, and all visitors to the museum the opportunity to take part in a creative process that explores form, materials, and ideas in an open and accessible way.
The studio focuses on the working methods of Ásmundur Sveinsson — how he developed his work through experimentation, repetition, and a close dialogue with materials. Emphasis is placed on simple yet varied materials and a hands-on, craft-based approach, where the process itself is valued more highly than the final outcome.

Be warmly welcomed to Wonderland in Ásmundarsafn – an open studio that places emphasis on togetherness and living creativity, inspired by the methods of Ásmundur Sveinsson.

Four workshops will be offered, open on a rotating basis throughout the period. Each workshop explores different pathways in creative practice and introduces varied approaches to working with materials. Visitors are welcome to come and go as they please, stay for a short time or longer, and participate on their own terms—alone, with others, or in intergenerational settings.
Wonderland: Open Workshop is a platform for curiosity, play, and togetherness. It creates a space where ideas emerge through hands-on making, conversation is allowed to flow freely, and artistic creation becomes alive, open, and shaped by the participants themselves.  

Wonderland: Open Workshop is an independent continuation of the project Wonderland: Work in Progress, in which six artists were invited to relocate their studios to Ásmundarsafn for an extended period of time. That project focused on artistic processes and open dialogue between the artist, the artworks, and visitors. In the Open Workshop, this approach is further developed, with a particular emphasis on the participation of children and families.

Wonderland: Open workshop

Hugo Llanes

In this exhibition Llanes examines the intricate and often contradictory experience of cultural adaptation as an immigrant. Engaging with foundational elements of both Icelandic and Mexican/Latino culture: language, food, art history, and music, he investigates how cultural exchanges take shape, which parallels are in place and what it means to belong. 

Hugo Llanes (b. 1990) is the 54th artist to exhibit in Gallery D, a space dedicated to artists whose practice has had a formative influence on the Icelandic visual arts scene and who are invited to present their first solo exhibition in a public museum.

In Gallery D his work draws on the structures and peculiarities of language, errors in translation, lived experience, and the symbolic markers encountered throughout his journey. For Llanes, thoughts and words exist in a constant state of translation: errors, gaps, and misunderstandings naturally arise as his cultural identity is slowly transforming. From this liminal space he created Bonita, an alter ego who inhabits the in between of cultural identities, where interpretation and meaning remain perpetually in flux. Words shift as they move from one language to another; their emotional resonance alters or fades. In much the same way, the self is reshaped through the movement between countries looking for a new home, whether voluntary or driven by necessity. Bonita attempts to hold on to traces of her former identity while simultaneously adapting to a new social landscape.

The exhibition is made up of multiple different art mediums, supported by a structure of steel pipes traditionally used for scaffolding. A metaphor for a state under construction and of transformation. Punk aesthetics, vulnerability, and humour infuse the exhibition, serving as tools through which the artist communicates both collective and deeply personal aspects of the immigrant experience in Iceland.

Originally from Mexico, Llanes now lives and works in Reykjavík. He holds an MFA in Fine Arts from the Iceland University of the Arts and a BA in Visual Arts from Universidad Veracruzana, Mexico. He has been an active participant in initiatives that advocate for the inclusion of minority communities, including Komd’inn, Artists in Iceland Action Visa Group, and Get Together (GETA).


D54 Hugo Llanes: Bonita

Katrín Elvarsdóttir

Black and White close up photo of  Fenjagreni by artist Katrínu Elvarsdóttur

At the forefront are three plant species, cherry blossom, banana plant, and Dawn Redwood each with a long and fascinating history connecting different continents. She follows them with her camera – not to pin them down, but to record them and transform them into another form. In the photograph they belong to another world, created by the artist. They bear witness to something movable, but not forgotten, of what can flourish — even far away from its origins.

In A Botanical Future, Katrín focuses on plants that have traveled between habitats. 

Katrín Elvarsdóttir:  A Botanical Future

This project was Iceland's contribution to the 19th International Architecture Exhibition of the Venice Biennale in 2025. The exhibition tells the story of a future society that has learned to tame lava flows, utilize them, and thus turn a local threat into an opportunity for creativity.

Lavaforming is a proposal on how the brutal force of lava can be turned into a valuable resource, capable of lowering atmospheric emissions through its future use as a sustainable building material.

In our story, placed in 2150, we have harnessed the lava flow, just as we did with geothermal energy 200 years earlier in Iceland. The main goal of Lavaforming is to show that architecture can be the force that rethinks and shapes a new future with sustainability, innovation, and creative thinking. A lava flow can contain enough building material for the foundations of an entire city to rise in a matter of weeks without harmful mining and non-renewable energy generation. Lavaforming is exploring a building material that has never been used before. The theme is both a proposal and a metaphor - architecture is in a paradigm shift, many of our current methods have been deemed obsolete or harmful in the long term. In our current predicament - we need to be bold, think in new ways, look at challenges and find the right resources - Arnhildur Pálmadóttir, curator, architect, founder and creative director of Lavaforming. 

Architect Arnhildur Pálmadóttir is the founder and owner of s.ap architects, which specializes in sustainability and circularity in construction, and the curator and the creative director of Lavaforming. She is renowned for her entrepreneurial attitude and interdisciplinary interest that she uses to tackle projects from various perspectives. 

The exhibition team of the Venice Biennale comes from s. ap architects, an interdisciplinary research studio focusing on speculative projects of the future, along with interdisciplinary collaborators. The exhibition team consists of Arnhildur Pálmadóttir, Arnar Skarphéðinsson, Björg Skarphéðinsdóttir, Sukanya Mukherjee, Jack Armitage, and Andri Snær Magnason. The graphic design is handled by the design studio Studio Studio, and Markús Þór Andrésson, Head of Exhibitions and Mediation at the Reykjavík Art Museum, serves as the exhibition's consultant. 


s. ap architects: Lavaforming

Kristín Helga Ríkharðsdóttir is the 53rd artist to exhibit in the D Gallery. Here, artists who shaped the Icelandic art scene are invited to debut their work in a solo exhibition at a public museum.

The Smooth Operator is a new video-installation where we follow a woman in pursuit of absolute smoothness of her legs. This gradually develops into an obsession and an unexplained fear of short, dark hairs. The work takes on a form that is both attractive and unsettling. Through absurd humor, hair-like textures, and obsessive attention to feet, beauty rituals acquire an almost supernatural quality, driven by a belief in transformation.

Kristín Helga Ríkharðsdóttir (b. 1993) works across multiple media, translating ideas drawn from her own experiences, stories, and everyday objects into diverse forms. Through painting, photographs, sculpture, video, and sound, she engages with the hyperreality of everyday life and examines the tension between the natural, the man-made, and the staged. Kristín seeks to reflect the world we inhabit, where distinctions between reality and fiction are increasingly blurred.

Kristín Helga Ríkharðsdóttir graduated from the Fine Arts Department of the Iceland University of the Arts in 2016 and participated in an exchange program at the Universität der Künste in Berlin, where she also completed an internship after graduation. In 2019, she moved to New York to pursue an MFA in Studio Art at New York University, completing the program in January 2022.  

Her works have been exhibited widely, both in Iceland and internationally, including at Gerðarsafn, Hafnarborg, The Living Art Museum, Þula Hafnartorg, and 80WSE in New York. In the summer of 2024, she was invited to participate in a studio residency at ISCP in New York through the Icelandic Art Center. Her films have received awards at film festivals, and a music video by her was nominated for the Icelandic Music Awards in 2019.  

She has received numerous grants and recognitions, including a grant and fellowship from the Leifur Eiríksson Foundation (2020–2021), a grant from the Guðmunda Andrésdóttir Fund in 2020, a grant from the Scandinavian Foundation in 2019, and a scholarship for promising students from Landsbankinn in 2021.


D53 Kristín Helga Ríkharðsdóttir: The Smooth Operator

Black and white photo of artist Finnur Arnar Arnarsson

Svarthvít mynd af Finni Arnari Arnarssyni

He finds form in his ideas in a variety of media, such as sculpture, installations, and photographs.

Finnur Arnar Arnarson often works with the relationship between man and the environment in his works.

Finnur Arnar studied, first in the sculpture department and then in the polytechnic department of the Icelandic School of Art and Crafts, graduating in 1991. In parallel with his art, he has designed sets for theaters, exhibitions for museums and institutions, as well as teaching art. He was the artistic director and ran the Skúrinn Cultural Center from 2012 to 2014. Finnur Arnar's works are always on the border of nature, humanity and culture - they are reflections on the smallness of man in relation to larger and stronger forces and how that fact changes our perception of our own existence.

Undraland is a project dedicated to the history of Ásmundarsafn. It was the home and studio of sculptor Ásmundur Sveinsson (1893-1982), which he designed himself and built between 1942-1950. The house was next to a farmhouse called Undraland (Wonderland). Ásmundur named the house and his works after him to the city of Reykjavík, and a museum dedicated to his memory was established there in 1983. During the four decades that the artist worked in the house, it was a venue for fertile artistic creation. Throughout 2025, artists have been offered facilities in the house to work on their own works in progress or any kind of process, and in 2026, Finnur Arnar will step on the platform as the sixth artist with a work in progress in Ásmundarsafn.

The work is called Judgment and is about being this male animal but also about being condemned to be an artist.

"I live in a tent inside the museum, day and night, a bit like an animal. Up in the dome, I'm painting a "dome," a kind of church ceiling like in old cathedrals."

"I am no Michelangelo and not a painter, but he was not one either, so my judgment will not be a fresco but more of a mixed media. The church had church ceilings painted to tell people how they should behave and how they would be punished if they did not obey. Few people could read at that time, which is why they resorted to imagery."

Finnur Arnar Arnarsson, artist.

Wonderland: Work in progress with Finnur Arnar

Black and white photo of artist Sara Riel

In what way do we try to make sense of nature, categorize, define and claim it? 

Nature appears in Sara's works in various ways, and at the heart is the relationship between man and the environment. 

Sara's subjects span everything from flora and fauna to outer space and in her work she draws on exceptional craftsmanship and ingenuity to create compelling visual interpretations of pressing issues. At Ásmundarsafn, Sara will explore the inner landscape of the human being—emotions, brain waves, and neural signals—and examine how we encounter and process them. How do they take shape and become part of a shared experience?  

She will examine how stimuli from the external environment can form knots, tangles and accumulations in our inner lives—and how such forms manifest in imagery, bodily experience, and language. The creative process itself takes center stage, not only as an outcome but as a method: a way to release inner tension and transform emotions into material form. Much of the process will take place at Ásmundarsafn, in open dialogue with visitors and in their presence.  

Undraland is a project dedicated to the history of Ásmundarsafn. The building once served as the home and studio of the sculptor Ásmundur Sveinsson (1893–1982), which he designed himself and built between 1942 and 1950. The property stood at the edge of a meadow belonging to a farm called Undraland. Ásmundur bequeathed the house and his works to the City of Reykjavík upon his death, and in 1983 a museum was established there in his memory. During the four decades in which the artist worked in the building, it was a site of fertile artistic creation. Throughout 2025, artists are offered the opportunity to work in the house on works in progress or on artistic processes of any kind.  

Sara Riel (b. 1980) studied visual art at the Iceland University of the Arts and at the Weißensee Academy of Art in Berlin, from which she graduated in 2006. She is well known for her large-scale murals in public spaces, while also having works in numerous museum collections and exhibiting widely both in Iceland and internationally.

Wonderland: Work in Progress with Sara Riel

Steina Vasulka

Svarthvít mynd af Stenu að spila á fiðlu.

The exhibition is the first major retrospective of Steina's work in Iceland. It will span the entire scope of Steina's artistic career, from early experiments in documentary video work to her most recent installations from the early 2000s. Taken together, the retrospective traces the development of Steina’s ideas and technological innovations over several decades. Her work uniquely connects video art, music, and technology in ways that are both highly inventive and playful.   

Steina is internationally recognized as a leading pioneer in video and new media art; she is also a major influence on contemporary art in Iceland. 

Steina (b. Steinunn Briem Bjarnadottir, 1940, Iceland; lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico) trained as a violinist in Reykjavík and Prague. She emigrated to the United States in 1965 with her life partner, Woody Vasulka. Initially working as a freelance musician in New York, she began to focus on video in 1970, and in 1971, cofounded The Electronic Kitchen (later The Kitchen), the legendary multidisciplinary avant-garde performance and experimental art space in New York City. After moving to Buffalo in 1973, Steina helped develop the production lab at the Center for Media Study, SUNY at Buffalo.  Since 1980, she has lived in Santa Fe, New Mexico, exhibiting regularly around the world. Her work is considered foundational in the history of video art.

The National Gallery of Iceland and the Reykjavík Art Museum are proud to present a collaboration on this comprehensive exhibition of the works of visual artist Steina Vasulka. The exhibition will open on October 4, 2025, and be on view until January 11, 2026. It will take place in four exhibition halls of the National Gallery of Iceland four halls of Reykjavík Art Museum. This exhibition is organized by the MIT List Visual Arts Center in collaboration with the Buffalo AKG Art Museum. It is co-curated by Natalie Bell, MIT List Visual Arts Center, and Helga Christoffersen, Buffalo AKG Art Museum. Coordinating curators for the Iceland edition of the exhibition are Markús Þór Andrésson, Reykjavík Art Museum, and Pari Stave, National Gallery of Iceland.

Steina: Playback

Kristín Gunnlaugsdóttir

Kristín Gunnlaugsdóttir, Unspoken V, 2025

Kristín is one of the most prolific and beloved artists of contemporary Icelandic art, with numerous major exhibitions and works held in public collections.

Kristín Gunnlaugsdóttir’s mid-career retrospective in the West Gallery of Kjarvalsstaðir, offers a unique insight into human existence and emotional life.

Kristín Gunnlaugsdóttir has gained recognition for her fearless approach to breaking apart and reassembling her visual language and methods. Drawing on centuries-old traditions of icon painting, she creates figurative works based on complex symbolic systems. She also produces abstract works that resonate with the expressive modes of modernism, as well as meticulously crafted embroidery pieces based on swift sketches – to name just a few examples. The exhibition offers a broad overview of her career, while also presenting new and unexpected works created specifically for this occasion.

Kristín’s art conveys emotion, both universal and personal. At the heart of her practice lies an inexhaustible interest in the human body. The body is not presented as a neutral form, but as a living vessel of emotion, identity, and spiritual inquiry. She is a master of capturing moments of stillness and vulnerability, where bodies – especially female bodies – appear in subjective spaces: elevated, dreamlike, humorous, or everyday. Through her images, we sense how she approaches the subject with respect, curiosity, and sensitivity to how the body and visual language can express what cannot be said in words. Carefully chosen clues – a pose, an object, a color, or a texture – guide the viewer in perceiving the unspoken.

Kristín Gunnlaugsdóttir was born in 1963 and studied art at the Akureyri School of Visual Arts and the Icelandic College of Art and Crafts from 1983 to 1988. She then continued her studies abroad, focusing on icon painting at the convent of the Franciscan Missionaries of Mary in Rome, followed by studies at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Florence from 1987 to 1993. Kristín is the ninth artist selected for the Reykjavík Art Museum’s exhibition series at Kjarvalsstaðir, which highlights the careers of key figures in Icelandic art. Each artist is chosen for their unique contribution and specialization in terms of media, methods, and subject matter. This positioning is reflected in the presentation of key works from different periods in the West Gallery, accompanied by a catalogue that places the artist’s career in the context of art history and the present day.

Kristín Gunnlaugsdóttir: Unspoken

That world has influenced her artistic creation, especially ideas about the boundaries of reality and staging, truth and fakeness. 

Alongside her artistic practice, Amanda has worked with set design in films. 

Amanda has also drawn inspiration from research and hypotheses about the nature of visual perception, everything that the human eye detects but at the same time what falls outside our field of vision.
Recently, Amanda has embraced new research taking place in Japan, partly exploring alternative experiments on artificial intelligence. She is interested in how perception affects the progress of knowledge; how unformed awareness takes in information to its advantage on other and less rational grounds than intellectual ones.
Wonderland is a project dedicated to the history of Ásmundarsafn. This was the home and studio of sculptor Ásmundur Sveinsson (1893-1982), which he designed himself and built in the years 1942-1950. The plot was adjacent to a farm called Undraland (Wonderland). Ásmundur bequeathed the house and his works to the city of Reykjavik after his day, and a museum dedicated to his memory was established there in 1983. During the four decades that the artist worked in the house, it was a scene of vibrant artistic creation. Throughout the year 2025, artists are invited to elaborate on their own works in progress or any state of flux.
Amanda Riffo (b. 1977) Riffo is a French-Chilean artist who has been based in Reykjavík since 2012. She graduated from the École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts in 2002 with an MA in Fine Arts. Amanda received the Icelandic Art Prize as Artist of the Year 2024 for her solo exhibition, House of Purkinje, at the Living Art Museum.


Wonderland: Work in Progress with Amanda Riffo

Elsa Jónsdóttir

Part of a wooden sculpture by Elsa Jónsdóttir

She develops symbols that she transposes, teasing out a new meaning for her subjects. This may happen though the letters of writing being turned into a general visual language. In this exhibition, however, sounds and the act of listening are turned into an installation that affects our sensory organs.

In her work, Elsa researches the transformation of forms into abstract levels of understanding, a kind of morphology of language. 

The sculpture, sound, and light installation exhibited in the Hafnarhús D-Gallery, offers several layers of readings. At first glance, it is a space filled with playful forms, sounds, and mysterious lights. When we spend more time in it and listen carefully, it raises deeper aesthetic questions: Can human perception be cast into form? Is attention an active form of creation?
The magic happens when listening becomes seeing. Listening is attention. Listening is understanding. Listening is love.

Elsa works with the morphology of the language, typography, words and allusions. Her work expresses a vocabulary of expression, constructing symbols and forms into visual poetry. Recently moving from two-dimensional works in public space to three-dimensional sculpture. Elsa has been a member of the art duo Krot & Krass, creating numerous murals in Iceland and abroad. Elsa has been involved in the operation of numerous artist-run spaces in Reykjavík, with a special mention of the community project Fúsk in Gufunes.

The D-Gallery exhibition series started in 2007 and invites emerging artists who are contributing to the development of the local contemporary art scene to hold their first solo exhibition in a public museum.

D52 Elsa Jónsdóttir: Lend an Ear

Útskriftarsýniing Listaháskóla Íslands

At the 2026 BA Graduation Exhibition in Architecture, Design and Fine Arts, over 80 students from the University of the Arts will be exhibiting their work. 

Reykjavík Art Museum hosts the graduation exhibition of BA-level students from the Department of Fine Art, the Department of Design, and the Department of Architecture at the Iceland University of the Arts.

Throughout their studies, students have developed their methodologies and defined and deepened their areas of interest. The works in the exhibition reflect this development, as their latest research takes shape in a variety of media – in videos, prints, drawings, clothing, models, 3D works and websites.
Each student approaches the present from their own perspective, but in the works in the exhibition, speculations about the transformed media landscape, craft traditions, the relationship between the body and clothing, empathy with insects, opportunities in small-scale industry, the obsession with collecting, clothing, vulnerability, and overwhelming institutions can be discerned.

IUA Graduation Festival 2026

Karin Sander

Karin Sander is a well known German artist who lives and works in Berlin, but over the past thirty years she has spent considerable time in Iceland and used the country as a subject in many of her works. This comprehensive exhibition, which is part of the Reykjavík Arts Festival, features pieces spanning the artist’s entire career and offers insight into the work of an international conceptual artist who engages with our environment and existence in unexpected and impactful ways.

In the exhibition, everyday life becomes new and unexpected, we ourselves become different and part of Karin Sander’s body of work.

Karin is known for revealing new dimensions of reality with minimal intervention. Many of her works rely on the participation of exhibition visitors or the influence of the surrounding environment, and her subtle interventions into the museum space invite reflection on the place itself—its purpose and its nature. The exhibition Karin Sander 1957–2057 explores notions of site-specificity in geographical, physical, and conceptual terms. Visitors are invited to have themselves scanned and 3D printed as small figurines; blank canvases placed out in the open accumulate surface textures under different conditions and a neon sign positions viewers within Hafnarhús according to Google Earth measurements.  

The exhibition features brand new paintings from the series Weathered Paintings—works created by placing untreated canvas in unexpected locations. Over time, the canvases absorb the conditions of their surroundings. Instead of traditional brushwork, these pieces are formed through natural processes of weathering and thus become spontaneous landscape images of the places where they were situated.
The works were created across the country and reflect the artist’s interest in the interplay of material, time, and place. The frames have weathered in all regions of Iceland, and during her stay here last summer, Karin travelled around the country, placing canvases in locations including Arnarfjörður, Kerlingarfjöll, and on the north side of Hafnarhús.  

Karin Sander’s works often rely on the participation of exhibition visitors and on ideas about the influence of time and place on our self image and appearance. One of the exhibition’s most extensive pieces is Visitors 1:8. It is technically complex and develops over the course of the exhibition through the participation of guests.
Three dimensional prints of scanned visitors form an impressive sculpture as the work comes into being before the audience’s eyes. 


Póst­lagt málverk 156, Bonn - Berlin - New York - Reykjavík eftir Karin Sander

Karin Sander received her art education in Düsseldorf and has, throughout her career, held professorships in fine art at Kunsthochschule Berlin Weißensee and in art history and design at ETH Zurich in Switzerland. She represented Switzerland at the 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale together with Philip Ursprung. Karin Sander has received numerous international awards, including a research fellowship from the Whitney Museum in New York, the Rome Prize, and the Villa Romana Prize. Her works are included in public and private collections around the world; in this context, both the Reykjavík Art Museum and the National Gallery of Iceland hold works by her.
Exhibitions of her work have been presented at renowned institutions worldwide, such as Kunstmuseum Winterthur and SFMOMA. Karin is also the creator of notable public artworks, particularly in Germany and Switzerland, and in 2018 she won the competition for a public art installation in Vogabyggð in Reykjavík.   

The exhibition Karin Sander 1957–2057 introduces the artist’s conceptual approach to material and space, and how she surprises us with her innovative treatment of everyday objects, architecture, and digital media.






Karin Sander 1957-2057

Painting of Ingólfur Arnarson by Johan Peter Raadsig

What is the image of Reykjavík, past and present? Through what lens do artists view the city, and which of its features are highlighted in the visual language of different generations? And how does art help us see the familiar in a new light?  

On the occasion of Reykjavík’s 240th anniversary in 2026, the city’s appearance throughout history is examined in a summer exhibition at Kjarvalsstaðir.

We present new contemporary artworks, showcase interesting works from the museum’s collection, and borrow curious objects from other museums and institutions. Here, we see the city evolve from a trading post and fishing village into a multicultural center of culture and tourism, depicted in a lively, fragmented, and ever-changing way. The exhibition raises questions about identity, urban planning, social structure, and cultural self-perception. The tangible is displayed alongside the lyrical, the historical, and the artistic, the personal and the collective.  

Alongside the exhibition, a rich program of entertainment, events, and educational activities will be offered. The project is developed by the exhibition team of the Reykjavík Art Museum, consisting of Markús Þór Andrésson, Sigurður Trausti Traustason, and Sunna Ástþórsdóttir.

Big Little City – Images of Reykjavík

Katarzyna Górna, Double Portrait, 2001, photograph, 75 × 75 cm, Bunkier Sztuki Collection