Icelandic Art Abroad - Early summer 2023

Ragnar Kjartansson: Epic Waste of Love and Understanding

Solo exhibition at Louisiana Museum of Modern Art (DK) opening on June 9 and will be on display until October 22.

An array of video art, paintings, sculptures and drawings will be on display, including several of the artist’s most beloved works. Among them will be his immersive nine-channel video installation The Visitors (2012), featuring Kjartansson and a group of his musician friends performing at a crumbling mansion formerly owned by the Astor family in upstate New York.

Shoplifter: Hyperweb

Solo exhibition at Kai Art Center (ES) from May 27 until the October 26 2023

Both critically-acclaimed and loved by the public, Reykjavik-based Hrafnhildur Arnadóttir / Shoplifter will create a unique multicolored installation for the Kai space using synthetic hair extensions. These colorful mass-produced fibers are carefully mixed and transformed from their original purpose to create a suspended labyrinth of colors and a web of intertwined swirls as they float in chaotic formation around the viewer. The installation inspires an inner journey with a multisensory language of texture and vibrant chromatic 3D formation.

Nordic Art and Culture Initiative

The Buffalo AKG Art Museum has started a 60 year Nordic Art and Culture Initiative across the institution’s departments. Which will provide a unique platform in North America for art of the Nordic Region in a broad sense, encompassing artists whose practices are tied to the Nordic Region. Recently, changes have been made to the original design by Gordon Bunshaft in 1962, the Knox Building’s centerpiece is the Ralph C. Wilson, Jr. Town Square, a 6,000-square-foot community gathering space. The museum has enclosed the formerly open-air courtyard with Common Sky, a stunning new site-specific sculpture designed by Olafur Eliasson and Sebastian Behmann of Studio Other Spaces, and added a new entry on the building’s east side.

Elín Hansdóttir: What Happens when Nothing Happens?

Elín Hansdóttir’s artistic practice transforms spaces, distorting our sensory experience of space and our sense of spatial orientation. Her exhibition What happens when nothing happens? at the Schering Stiftung is designed to challenge our perception, harnessing for the first time the possibilities of virtual reality. Hansdóttir explores the question of how images and digital media influence our comprehension of a specific space, in this case the Project Space of the Schering Stiftung.

Rúrí: And now what?

And now what? features a newly-commissioned work titled Forest, created from the ash and other burned remains of trees from several forests in Santo Tirso (Monte Córdova, Santa Cristina do Couto and São Miguel do Couto) that were destroyed in the 2022 forest fires – a work that in its installation within the Corridor as well as in accompanying photo documentation underscores the impact of climate crisis and rising temperature on local ecosystems.

Hallgerður Hallgrímsdóttir & Heiða Helgadóttir: Søsterskap

The exhibition, Søsterskap – Contemporary Nordic Photography, brings together photographers based in Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden. Since the 1980s, we have witnessed many active photographers, whose works–based on different approaches from documentary to conceptual–reflect the socio-political context of the welfare state. The interplay between photography and this social democratic model is here seen as a key factor in defining the panorama of camerawork from the region.