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

Painting of Ingólfur Arnarson by Johan Peter Raadsig

Kjarvalsstaðir

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?  

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.

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

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

Karin Sander

Many of her works draw inspiration from the country’s landscape, culture, and society. 

Karin Sander is a celebrated German artist who has cultivated a long-standing relationship with Iceland since her first visit thirty years ago. 

Reykjavík Art Museum now presents a comprehensive exhibition of both new and earlier works, organized in collaboration with the Reykjavík Arts Festival. Sander’s practice often involves the participation of visitors and explores the interplay between material, time, and place. 
The exhbition presence in place examines notions of presence and site-specificity - geographical, bodily, and experiential. Visitors are invited to be 3D scanned and reproduced as small figurines; blank canvases placed throughout the country gather surface traces under varying conditions; and a neon sign situates viewers within Hafnarhús according to Google Earth coordinates. 

Karin Sander (b.1957) is known for her conceptual approach to material and space, working with everyday objects, architecture, and digital media. Her work has been exhibited internationally at leading institutions, including the Venice Architecture Biennale 2023, Kunstmuseum Winterthur, and SFMoma. In 2018, she won a competition for a public artwork in Reykjavík.


Karin Sander 1957-2057

Hugo Llanes

Hugo Llanes is an artist and cultural facilitator based in Reykjavík. His œuvre explores political and social issues through artistic research and a wide range of media, including installation, performance, and expanded painting. His work examines themes such as migration and adaptation, belonging, power dynamics, and post-colonial identity. Llanes often incorporates food into his practice, inviting audience participation and engagement.

Hugo Llanes' solo exhibition in D gallery.

Recent exhibitions include Your Addiction is the Message! at Gallery 99 – Brno House of Arts in the Czech Republic; Los Primxs, a performance in collaboration with Lucky 3 Collective at Local Taller Artist-run in Xalapa, Mexico; goodgonebadwrong at the Living Art Museum in Iceland; and Tracing Fragments at the Kópavogur Art Museum, Iceland, which was awarded Best Group Show by the Icelandic Art Prize in 2024.

Reykjavik Art Museum ‘s D-Gallery exhibition series started in 2007. Emerging artists, who are shaping the local contemporary art scene, are invited to hold their first solo show in a public museum.

D54 Hugo Llanes

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

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

Finnur Arnar Arnarson

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

Sara Riel

Black and white photo of artist Sara Riel

Ásmundarsafn

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.