On future and fortune
A detailed model of a house in ruins lays on the floor on a pile of black sand, the miniature interior design furniture clashes with the wreckage scattered around the building. The roof, as well as one of the four walls, has collapsed, nonetheless two design metal...
Stars are the flowers of our skies: The Wildflower
in conversation with Becky Forsythe and Penelope Smart In The Wildflower, we’re transported into a disorienting horizon full of flowers,...
Vanishing Crowd: Una Björg and COVID-19
From the 16th of January till the 15th of March 2020 Una Björg Magnúsdóttir had an exhibition in the D-gallery of The Reykjavík Art Museum titled...
Post-Digital World(s) of Icelandic Art
Writing about contemporary digital culture in mid-2020 has a different context than it did at the beginning of the year. In the midst of a global...
What’s more monumental than buildings? a show and tell with Melanie Ubaldo
Until we take the time to know any place intimately, our awareness is often limited to our associations with their landmarks and stereotypes. When I...
Digital Dynamics – Arts New Representations
The exhibition Arts New Representations opens on Saturday June 13th at 14:00 on the website of the online magazine Artzine (https://www.artzine.is)....
Fermenting process: a show and tell with Sindri Leifsson
With Bold Knife and Fork opens with M.F.K. Fisher poignantly stating that gradual changes in a basic recipe are intrinsically tangled with man’s...
The Drumming Beat: Daníel Magnússon at Hverfisgallerí
Daníel Magnússons´s exhibition TRANSIT at Hverfisgallerí explores a rhythm of detail, depicting images of close up angles and geometrical forms...
A short note on post-COVID-19: The Terms of Art in Iceland
All of a sudden, things are moving quickly. 600 months have been added to the artist’s salaries starting this year, seemingly available for the...
Museums in the time of CoronaVirus – A Conversation Around Digital Efforts
The rise of Covid19 and the government imposed social gathering ban has taken its toll across all cultural platforms of consumption in Iceland, not...
What rainbows we choose to see, a show and tell with Florence Lam
In what continues to be my favourite work of Hong Kong-based artist Florence Lam, a mirror, a stool and a spray bottle are arranged by a window in a...
Between publication and exhibition with Lukas Kindermann’s Illustrated London News Editions
On March 7th, 2020, ´uns artbooks presented its second publication by artist Lukas Kindermann, in cooperation with Studio Studio. The publication is...
The Artist Platforming the Subtle: Meet Sunna Svavarsdóttir
“when tying your shoelaces place one foot in front of the other when wishing for wet feet pour water inside your boots, when a pause is needed put...
Iridescence, domesticity, and sweaty cheese: a show and tell with Anna Hrund Másdóttir
I remember the first time I had a Pop-Tart. It was Frosted Strawberry flavoured, with a thick, shiny, baby pink glaze and rainbow sprinkles smeared...
Artefacts from the restless art’s excavations
History occurs in a space between the archive and life, between the past that is being collected and reality, understood as everything that has not...
Hreinn Friðfinnsson’s assistants on the outside looking in (from the inside)
Recently on view at KW Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin from September 28th, 2019 to January 5, 2020, was a retrospective of Hreinn...
New, dystopian and unexpected: “I’m notreallyinterested in anythinggreaterthan life”
Disarray. Carefully scripted disarray, with plastic-wrappers, video-makers, light-fixtures and oil slicks, peculiar, confusing, mysterious; welcome...
“Lucky Me?” by Lucky 3 at Kling & Bang
In the exhibition Lucky Me? the art-collective Lucky 3, consisting of Darren Mark, Dýrfinna Benita Basalan, and Melanie Ubaldo, draws to attention...
“Kiss the day goodbye” by Charles Atlas at i8 gallery
As the sun disappears from the sky in Iceland, it seems fitting that i8 Gallery should choose an exhibition of this kind to end the year and take us...
A! performance festival: in conversation with director Hlynur Hallsson
In its 5th iteration, A! Performance Festival returned this year to galvanise Akureyri’s art scene. Showcasing the interplay between visual arts and...
“It’s buzzing with energies”: Unpacking the Euro-Icelandic Art Exchange
Like an intricate seam, there are three layers of cultural thread which stitch Iceland’s art scene together with Europe. The first thread is...
The Portal, Illuminated – Styrmir Örn Guðmundsson at Berg Contemporary
In a comic-book reminiscent and delightfully playful fashion, Styrmir Örn Guðmundsson unveils an intertwining of nature, human, and cosmic energy ...
“You are the Input” by Ingunn Fjóla Ingthorsdóttir at Gallerie Herold, Bremen
Arriving on the train to Bremen, I found the artist-run Galerie Herold by following a set of abandoned train tracks from the station. Upon arriving...
Pavilion Nordico: a bridge between the Nordic countries and Argentina
I met with Sara Løve Daðadóttir, Josefin Askfelt and Emil Willumsen who are part of the team behind Pavilion Nordico in Buenos Aires, a project...
A Kassen’s exhibition “Mother and Child” at Kling & Bang
The exhibition Mother and Child by A Kassen acts on the relationships between the viewers, the architecture and the artworks, inviting us to look at...
A Violent Absurdity: Valheimur at Hverfisgallerí
Valheimur - a world is created, one that has semblances to our natural order and the social stories our cultures echo, yet is a product and figment...
The last exhibition at Listastofan: a conversation with founder Martyna Daniel
I had a chat with the founder and director of the artist-run space Listastofan, Martyna Daniel. We talked about the closure of Listastofan, and...
Conversations with contemporary Latvian art in Akureyri
Attacked by a cold morning breeze and a church bell sound of the North, I enter the Akureyri Art Museum as one of the first guests. The stairs of...
May You Live in Interesting Times
As occurs every odd year or so, visual art works are scattered around the islands of Venice, Italy for public viewing. La Biennale di Venezia was...
“Chromo Sapiens”: Hrafnhildur Arnardóttir/Shoplifter’s installation at the 58th Venice Biennale
The Icelandic pavilion at the 58th Venice Biennale features Hrafnhildur Arnardóttir/Shoplifter’s installation Chromo Sapiens, an astonishing hair...
Dreaming While Curating Mild Humidity – The (Digital) Age of Aquarius / Litils Háttar Væta – Stafræn öld vatnsberans
The digital world is a dream world of a sort. We are online in virtual reality not geographically locatable yet still encased in a persona as an...
“Event Horizon” at BERG Contemporary: a conversation with artists Marie Søndergaard Lolk, Sigrid Sandström & Hulda Stefánsdóttir
I spoke with the artists of Berg Contemporary's recently opened exhibition, Event Horizon. Marie Søndergaard Lolk, Sigrid Sandström & Hulda...
On Sculpture, an artbook by Eygló Harðardóttir
In the 1975 manifesto, The New Art of Making Books, by Ulises Carrión, the Mexican writer, curator, and conceptual artist expanded upon the...
Ólafur Elíasson Opens a Retrospective at the Tate Modern, Activates a Participatory Togetherness
Ólafur Elíasson's In Real Life at the Tate Modern presents a deeply moving collection of work that encompasses a full range of emotion, medium and...
A table or a hand: on the progressive hospitality within Snæbjörnsdóttir/Wilson’s Vanishing Point: where species meet
A wooden bespoke table grounds itself by the River Gota. A seabird soars above it, and clouds are scattered across the otherwise blue sky. These...
…and what then? at Nýlistasafnið
Entering Nýló I see a large clock, colorful drawings for musical scores, crumbling plastic containers, meticulously crafted bodies and utopian...
Arctic Art Summit 2019: The Arctic as a laboratory for sustainable art and cultural policy
The Arctic Art Summit is a biennial event established in 2017 which brings together art professionals, academics, artists, and those involved in the...
A Mirrored Detritus and the Camouflaged Body : B. Ingrid Olson at i8 Gallery
I8 recently added B. Ingrid Olson (b.1987) to their roster of represented artists, a Chicago based artist whose intriguing practice can be placed...
Confronting Surfaces
A bright colored tracksuit hanging from the ceiling is slowly turning as if an invisible air stream were spinning it around. When moving closer to...
Hulda Rós Guðnadóttir wins the 2019 Guðmunda S. Kristindóttir Award
In a seminar at the Academy of Fine Arts in Reykjavik, Hulda Rós Guðnadóttir explains in her terms that art creates questions for the audience, it...
On community, colour, and collaboration: an afternoon with Cobolt Collective.
I look up at the same sky as everyone else. These words were so thoughtfully strung along Cobolt Collective’s most recent mural which immediately...
Boekie Woekie, the longest running artists’ bookshop performance
In 1975, Ulises Carrión wrote the manifesto The New Art of Making Books. In the manifesto, the Mexican writer, curator, and conceptual artist...
Isle of Art: an interview with the author Sarah Schug
Sarah Schug is a German journalist based in Brussels who has been traveling in Iceland since 2009, after noticing the lack of books about Icelandic...
“Between people and places”: An Interview with Gavin Morrison
My first meeting with Gavin Morrison was brief, sparked through his research on Donald Judd in Iceland, and its connection to the Living Art Museum....
Not with a shout, but with a small cough.
Step into Arna Óttarsdóttir’s solo show Allt Fínt (Everything is Great) and be enveloped by an overwhelming warmth of pinks and oranges and plush...
An interview with Cosmos Carl
Cosmos Carl is a project by artists Frederique Pisuisse and Saemundur Thor Helgason. Their website can be described as an artist-run online...
Prime Matter – Kathy Clark at Studio Sol
In an industrial suburb of Reykjavik surrounded by car dealerships and warehouses, the home gallery of Studio Sol transforms the large working...
About science, emotions and the Roman Empire: a conversation with Geirþrúður Finnbogadóttir Hjörvar
A few weeks ago I had a chat with Geirþrúður Finnbogadóttir Hjörvar about her show Desargues’s Theorem Lecture and Three Other Sculptures at Kling...
Mary, a revolutionary feminist?
Having grown up in Italy, where the Roman Catholic Church is such a powerful institution and it is deeply rooted into the everyday lives of...
Eygló Harðardóttir and Leifur Ýmir Eyjólfsson Take Home Awards at the Icelandic Art Prize
“Time is money, it’s cliché, but it’s quite simple and true.” I’m sitting with Leifur Ýmir Eyjólfsson in his studio in downtown Reykjavík over...
In light – a weekend at List í Ljósi
I cross a mountain pass and follow the road down through a white valley, pass a frozen waterfall, through continuous turns. Then suddenly a sign...
Rósa Gisladóttir’s Mesh of Material and Light
Mediums, or the channels through which cultural practices are transmitted, have been subject of extensive research and re-defining in recent years....
“What’s wrong with this picture?” An interview with Libia Castro and Ólafur Ólafsson about their work at AVL MUNDO in Rotterdam
The artist duo Libia Castro and Ólafur Ólafsson recently presented two works for What's wrong with this picture?, a group exhibition at AVL MUNDO in...
Snip Snap Snubbur: a shift in Guðmundur Thoroddsen’s practice
Guðmundur Thoroddsen is best known for paintings and sculptures which used to embrace the irony and dreamy qualities of surrealism, opening a window...
Reflections on Belonging: Ingibjörg Friðriksdóttir at Ctrl Shft Collective
In the downtown district of Oakland, California, sound artist Ingibjörg Friðriksdóttir opened her latest installation work, Reflecting, in a group...
All Is Full of Love: A Preview of the Solo Exhibition of Hulda Rós Gudnadóttir at Künstlerhaus Bethanien
There are few artist-in-residencies geared at taking emerging contemporary artists to the next level in their career and even fewer that make...
Sara Riel: art as a state of meditative unconscious
Automatic, Sara Riel´s exhibition at Kling og Bang, presents intuitive drawings and perplexing forms that cleverly imbue elements of the uncanny and...
Inclusive Nation: Cycle Music and Art Festival 2018
This year’s edition of Cycle Music and Art Festival is titled Inclusive Nation, and it aims to place the festival in a larger context, looking at...
Come Rain or Shine by the International Young Female Artist Club
Human beings have always had a peculiar love-hate relationship with the weather. Our existence on earth is possible thanks to the atmosphere, the...
Eygló Harðardóttir’s Another Space
Eyglo Hardardottir is one of those artists who for some years now has been associated with the title of being an artist’s artist. It is therefore...
Disbelief – An Interview with Dan Byers
Having recently arrived from a trip to the United States, elements of the political climate were pretty unsettling and fresh on my mind. The...
Mom’s balls: a show across generations
Artists, in order to carry this title, need to be recognized as such from the local and/or international art scene. Besides their creative practice,...
INFÆDD // NATIVE – Photographic works by Nina Zurier at Studio Sol
The newest addition to exhibition spaces in Reykjavik, Studio Sol, held its inaugural opening on Saturday, July 28th, 2018 with a solo exhibition by...
To Step into the perspective of the exhibition maker
In 2001, when Danish curator Aukje Lepoutre Ravn began studying art history at Aarhus University, the notion of the independent curator wasn’t yet...
Black is Light by Claudia Hausfeld and Klara Sofie Ludvigsen
The exhibition, Black is Light, by Claudia Hausfeld and Klara Sofie Ludvigsen is on view at Harbinger until the 24th of June. In the exhibition,...
A Triangle Dreaming of a Triangle – an Interview with Ignacio Uriarte
In Ignacio Uriarte’s exhibition, Divisions and Reflections, now on view at i8 gallery until August 4th, the black and white drawings create a suite...
Beyond Human Impulses goes to Greece
The performance arts festival, Beyond Human Impulses, began at Mengi in Reykjavik on February 2nd, 2016 as a monthly performance series occurring on...
The Fabric Created the Form: On Artistic Potentials Of Covering
Plastic animals In september last year I saw a work at the Miró foundation in Barcelona that sparked my thinking about the act of covering, and its...
Visual art experiment wins the Berlinale
The Berlinale film festival is the first international film festival of the A-level status in the festival calendar each year. This year it took...
The Scale of It All
From screensaver screenshots taken in 2007 by Katrín Agnes Klar to pen plotter drawings on engravings from Baroque 1730 publications...
The diverse positions of curator Solvej Helweg Ovesen
In the years 2013-2017 Grosses Treffen, a networking event for visual artists, took place once a year at the Nordic embassies in Berlin. It included...
In the Garden of Anna Run
Íslenska It can be said that “Garden” (“Garður”) by Anna Rún Tryggvadóttir is, to a certain extent, watercolor art. Fourteen bottles, hanging upside...
Anna Julia’s Serenade
Erindi / Serenade is on exhibit at Hafnarborg Centre of Culture and Fine Art until October 22nd. In the exhibition by Anna Júlía Friðbjörnsdóttir,...
In the Beginning. Again
The question of creativity is a recurring theme in the work of Erla S. Haraldsdóttir. One might say that Haraldsdóttir ceaselessly challenges the...
Variations by Dodda Maggý at BERG Contemporary
Dodda Maggý’s exhibition Variations is on view at BERG Contemporary from August 18th to October 21st. The artist was recently awarded the ARoS -...
Infinite Western
Davíð Örn Halldórsson's exhibition River únd Bátur was recently on view at Hverfisgallerí. The...
The Permanent Recycling of Eternal Recurrence
Alicja Kwade's exhibition, ‘A Trillionth of a Second,’ is on display at i8 Gallery from June 22nd to August 12th, 2017. In glass cases sit what...
Making Folds in the Timeline
At Gerðarsafn Kópavogur Art Museum from June 3rd to August 20th a group show titled The In, With and Between Us / Innra, með og...
Amalia Pica – Set Theory & the representation of communication
Amalia Pica's solo exhibition — A un brazo de distancia — opened at NC-Arte (Bogota) this April. With works almost exclusively from this year...
Mapping Time both Eternal and Material with Gretar Reynisson
Although possessing a material reality, time exists without needing to be represented nor is its representation necessary in the experience of time....
Contemporary Icelandic Prints in Other Hats
Currently on view at the International Print Center in New York is Other Hats: Icelandic Printmaking, an exhibition of works curated by Ingibjörg...
They want to murder the patriarchy -Sita Valrún and Bergrún Anna tell us about Murder Magazine
The first edition of Murder Magazine was published in May 2017. The editors/curators are writer/artist collaborators Bergrún Anna Hallsteinsdóttir...
HARD-CORE AND ASAHI 4.0 — The Future of Robotic Curating
The next generation of robotic curation — ASAHI 4.0 — is projected to come out in 2017. A machine conceived by HARD-CORE, ASAHI is able to automate...
T E X T
T E X T - Selected text-based works from the collection of Pétur Arason and Ragna Róbertsdóttir opened September 15th and will be on display at...
The Alchemy of Color- Jeanine Cohen at Hverfisgallerí
The Space Between by the Belgian artist Jeanine Cohen is now on view at Hverfisgallerí from March 17th to April 29th. Jeanine Cohen (1951- ) is...
What Do You Hear When You Eat Chocolate
"Hot chocolate will leave the necessary stains for images to turn into visions and conversation. If the Cacao Allows it***" "This Rabbit Looks to...
What is outside the circle of friends
The Icelandic art scene has the tendency of being somewhat constructed around the phenomenon of the 'friend circle'. Certain artists are exhibited...
Curating The presence at Wind and weather window gallery
In the dark days of the New Year, January and February 2017, Wind and Weather Window Gallery presents The Presence, an artist performance series in...
A ‘site-specific play’ by Anne Rombach
Now on display for the months of November and December at Wind and Weather Window Gallery (Hverfisgata 37) is a ‘site-specific play’ by Anne Rombach...
The Importance of ‘What If?’
Kwitcherbellíakin at Reykjavik Art Museum.The two week installation Kwitcherbellíakin ended the last weekend of October at Reykjavik Art Museum as...
Sequences celebrates its 10 year Anniversary
Sequences - real time art festival celebrates its 10 year Anniversary Saturday November 19th in Reykjavík and welcomes everyone to the celebration...
First floor to the left / 1.h.v.
At Langahlið 19 in east Reykjavík is the home gallery of Guðrún Hrönn Ragnarsdóttir, named after its placement in the building, 1.h.v. (Fyrsta hæð...
Photography and Geologic Time – an inquiry into the perception of time
Normally, we think of rocks as dead material, but on a microscopic level they are in constant growth, animated by invisible chemical processes. The...
Tools For Transformation – A guide to collaborative, social and impactful projects
For the past five years the REITIR team has been running an annual two-week experimental workshop in Siglufjörður. The workshop is about...
Relationship between man and robot explored at SÍM
Arnar Ómarsson and Sam Rees show their latest experiments in SÍM exhibition space at Hafnarstræti 16. This exhibition brings together two very...
Look at Us
Vulnerable and endangered animals are Halla Gunnarsdóttir´s subject in her exhibition Look at Us. Halla presents 27 oil paintings, all of which...
The Living Art Museum (Nýló) receives donation from Ólafur Lárusson’s studio
The Living Art Museum is endowed with a large selection of material from the studio of artist Ólafur Lárusson (1951 - 2014). Family of the late...
Sigurður Guðjónsson at BERG Contemporary
From September 2nd to October 22nd Sigurður Guðjónsson will exhibit his first solo exhibition at BERG Contemporary. The former glass factory’s high...
Space / Drawing and Conceptual Horizons
By Becky Forsythe Space / drawing, which brings together numerous works on paper and in sculpture by Þóra Sigurðardóttir, offers a record of the...
Local Art Performances by Icelandic and International Artists: Plan B Art Festival in Borgarnes
Last Saturday I attended the inaugural Plan B Art Festival in Borgarnes, a town just an hour’s drive north of Reykjavík. It was a free event,...
OF LIGHT – a durational performance in the dark
Samantha Shay is a young American artist and director with a fascination and love for Iceland, its art scene and people. She is a CalArts graduate...
Interview with Callum Innes
The Scottish painter, Callum Innes was born in Edinburgh in 1962, he studied at Gray’s School of Art and the Edinburgh College of Art. Erin...
Steina’s Pergament / Bókfell
In Points of View: A Journey Through the Visual World of Iceland, six cultural institutions in Iceland collaborate in providing a journey through...
CALLUM INNES | 9 June – 6 August 2016
Opening Thursday 9 June, at 5-7 pm Callum Innes’s approach to the canvas, through his method of subtraction, has prompted the term “unpainting”, a...
STEYPA Photography Exhibition 2016
Open daily, 1 June until 31 August, Ólafsvík, Snæfellsnes The aim of STEYPA Photography Exhibition is to show a broad photographic perspective of...
Icelandic artists launch We Pay Visual Artists Campaign
Icelandic Campaign Website: vidborgummyndlistarmonnum.info About the Campaign We Pay Artists. From the website: www.payingartists.org.uk...