Below listed artists are part of CIA.IS video archive. Our selective video archive provides local and international visitors additional insight into the wide spectrum of artists and their work that constitutes the dynamic Icelandic art scene. It assembles artists from different generations working in all kind of media.

The video archive is regularly updated, selected by CIA.IS' committee.

A-G   H-J   K-O   P-Z

Anna Hallin

Anna Hallin (b. 1965) was born in Sweden and now lives in Iceland. Her oeuvre includes sensitive drawings, paintings, sculptural objects and video animation—sometimes intricate, sometimes spare and refined—in which her main source of inspiration is the world of microorganisms and invertebrates. She is also inspired by the design of household equipment, such as plumbing and tubing, and the relationships between technology, nature, and the human body. Her interest in connections and systems extend to how individuals in urban settings are linked to one another. Anna received an MFA in ceramics from Gothenburg University and an MFA in studio arts from Mills College, Oakland, California.
www.this.is/ahallin

Anna Jóelsdóttir

Anna Jóelsdóttir (b. 1947) studied at the University Teachers College of Iceland and received her MFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2002. Anna’s paintings, composed of hard-edged stripes or color fields in acrylic and intricately woven ink details, show “controlled and chaotic fragments of interrupted lines, structures, signs, and symbols” that look like fragments of something larger. Against a quiet background of unpainted gesso, her bold zigzags and blocks of color explode into minute tangles as her ink moves to connect, disconnect, and disguise what is seen. Anna’s paintings reflect the contrast between her adopted home in Chicago and her mother country.

www.annajoelsdottir.com

Anna Líndal

Anna Líndal’s (b. 1957) art addresses the struggle between repression and vitality, critique and creativity, objective documentation and unforeseeable metamorphosis. Working primarily in video installation and mixed media, she gives an initial impression of being pointedly critical, but upon closer inspection her work proves to be a subtle exploration of form and idea. Recent works integrate video—projected or presented on televisions or computer monitors—with tightly wound balls and cables of yarn or thread, her installations always responding to their architectural environments. Anna Líndal studied at The Slade School of Fine Art, University College, London and has been a professor at the Iceland Academy of the Arts since 2000.

www.annalindal.com

Auður Jónsdóttir

Auður Jónsdóttir (b. 1970) graduated from the Ceramics Department of the Icelandic College of Art and Crafts in 1997. She studied at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Munich from 1999 to 2006 and received the DAAD award from the German Academic Exchange Service for her achievements.
Her videos unite sculpture, movement and music that she composes herself. These videos often reveal Auður’s fanciful technique as well as her romantic sensibilities.
www.audurjonsdottir.com

Ásdís Sif Gunnarsdóttir

www.asdissifgunnarsdottir.com

Ásmundur Ásmundsson (b. 1971) penetrates contemporary culture through video, installation and sculpture to utilize its creative possibilities and weaknesses. Through sociological strategies, he assumes different roles in various works, his artistic approach often masquerading as virtuousness to prevent losing audiences in elevated meanings. Rather, Ásmundur keeps viewers wedged in the futility and debauchery of contemporary existence by optimistically commemorating it. He considers our foundation as civilized people to have eternal prospects and, despite (or because of) its tastelessness, to stem from freedom seeking genuineness. Now living in Berlin, Ásmundur studied at the Akureyri School of Art, the Icelandic College of Art and Crafts, and the School of Visual Arts, New York.
www.this.is/ausgot      see LIST#4

Ásta Ólafsdóttir

Birgir Andrésson (1956–2007), one of Iceland’s most renowned artists, has an extensive exhibition history including representing Iceland at the 1995 Venice Biennale. While most Icelandic artists of international stature have actively sought distance from the enmeshments of a small society, Birgir began early in his career to tackle not distance but problems of nearness. He is particularly interested in exploring those rhetorical structures and material practices integral to Icelandic history and folklore. Flags, postage stamps, lettering, cabinetry, ancient rhyme schemes, and archeological drawings are among the forms explored in his work. Birgir studied at the Icelandic College of Art and Crafts and at the Jan van Eyck Academie.
see LIST#1 and #16

Bjargey Ólafsdóttir (b. 1972) has studied film, photography, painting and mixed media in Reykjavík, Madrid, Helsinki, and Gothenburg. Her video work is full of ironic, sometimes violent or sinister, stories that hinge upon obsession and fantasy in the lives of contemporary urban men and women. Characters in her photography series include a bourgeois housewife, stereotypical Nordic women, and a couple buried amidst the mess of their bedroom—subjects lost in familiar but alienating interiors. Bjargey’s work is very much influenced by electronic music, with which she has also been experimenting as well. She lives and works in Reykjavík.

www.this.is/bjargey

Bryndís Hrönn Ragnarsdóttir

Bryndís Hrönn Ragnarsdóttir (b.1974) Studied and attained her degrees (BA, MA) at The Iceland Academy of The Arts, and The Akademie der Bildenden Kunste, Wien.
Through compositions in various medium, her work maintains a dialogue of affection and spatial interest. She operates intuitively, insisting on the use of material within reach, i.e. cheap and attainable. Her works tend to rely on a self-inductive logic, even dismiss the viewer, and in turn become strangely seductive.

Bryndís Snæbjörnsdóttir & Mark Wilson

Brynhildur Þorgeirsdóttir (b. 1955) studied at the Icelandic College of Art and Crafts, the Orrefors Glass School in Sweden, Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam, and the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland, California. She now lives and works in Reykjavík.
Working in concrete, glass, sand, and cast iron in mostly neutral colors, Brynhildur creates stark and rugged sculptures that refer to stylized landscape features, utilizing hard lines and geometrical forms that manifest solidity strength. Some of her works are incorporated into actual landscape itself. Brynhildur describes her solid rebar concrete block “mountains” as “the environmental art of the future.”

www.brynhildur.com

Darri Lorenzen

Darri Lorenzen (b. 1978) creates architectural installations and interventions based upon his preoccupation with location and dislocation, orientation and reorientation. His work demands active participation on behalf of the viewer, who becomes less of a viewer per se but rather a vital part of the artwork. Often incorporating elements such as sound and video—usually recorded in the same space as the installations themselves—Darri’s work is thus not only site-specific but creates sites anew. Darri, who has studied at Kunsthochschule Berlin-Weissensee and Royal Academy of Art in The Hague, lives and works in Berlin.

www.darrilorenzen.net

Dodda Maggý

www.doddamaggy.info

Eggert Pétursson (b. 1956) studied at the Icelandic College of Art and Crafts and the Jan van Eyck Academie. Living in Reykjavík and exhibiting regularly, Eggert recently took first prize at the 2006 Carnegie Art Awards. His paintings of tiny flowers blanketing his canvases have been charming viewers and confounding critics for years. As Eggert himself describes these works, they would seem to turn mostly on process—the way in which he teases forth the shapes of flowers from the canvas with brushstrokes of color, sometimes barely perceptible under layers of white. As he says of these paintings: “One can easily get lost in the details without ever achieving a complete perception.”
www.i8.is        see LIST#3

Egill Sæbjörnsson

Egill Sæbjörnsson’s (b. 1973) art is an unusual fusion of music, sound, video and installation in which he often appears himself as part of his exhibitions. He handles a variety of media and expressive idioms with remarkable facility. Harnessing computers, projections and musical instruments in his performances, he assumes different personae in each new context. In addition to his visual and installation art, he has a freestanding career in music and has released several solo albums.
Egill studied at the University of Paris, St. Denis and the Icelandic College of Art and Crafts. Since 1999 he has been sharing his time between Reykjavík and Berlin.

www.eaglestuff.net      see LIST#5

Eirún Sigurðardóttir

Eirún Sigurðardóttir (b. 1971) graduated from the Icelandic College of Art and Crafts in 1996 and studied at the Arts Academy in Berlin from 1996 to 1998. In 1996 she was a founding member of the artist collective The Icelandic Love Corporation. With this group, but also in solo shows, she has exhibited actively at home and abroad. In her work Eirún explores human embodiment and the physical and social aspects of the female gender. Employing a wide variety of media and artistic approaches—ranging from performance, video and photography to drawing and crocheting—she sensitively expresses complex aspects of the human condition.

www.this.is/eirun

Elín Hansdóttir (b. 1980), who studied at the Iceland Academy of the Arts, currently lives and works in Berlin. Elín’s installations create situations in which the viewer is drawn into a physical dialogue with her work, encouraging the possibility to re-evaluate one’s relation to space and place. Her work subtly encourages her audiences’ active interaction with light, color, or sound in pre-existing or created architectural spaces, elements that change based on a person’s bodily position in relation to the mechanisms of her site-specific creations. The apparent simplicity of form belies the complexity of her installations, where experience carries more importance than interpretation.

www.elinhansdottir.net/  see LIST#1

Erla Haraldsdóttir (b. 1967) lives and works in Berlin and Reykjavík. She studied at the Royal University College of Fine Arts, Stockholm, the New Genres Department at the San Francisco Art Institute, and the Valand School of Fine Art, Gothenburg. In earlier work, she digitally transformed images of urban environments to disrupt viewers’ senses, leading them to reflect on the possibilities of alternative realities. Recently the development of this concept has led Erla to an animated environment where a well-known neighborhood is transformed into animated scenery in which authentically filmed people operate. “Sad with Satie” is a “video diary” based on a personal experience of dealing with being heartbroken.

www.haraldsdottir.com      see LIST#12

Erling Þ. V. Klingenberg (b. 1970) studied at the Icelandic College of Art and Crafts and the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, Halifax. He has organized a large number of exhibitions in Iceland and Denmark, and he is one of the founders of Kling & Bang gallerí (2003) and KlinK and BanK studios (2004). With an obsessive drive to define the role of “the artist” in a rock-star society as the foundation of his work, Erling is as interested in process as he is in final products. His approach fluctuates between humorous, critical, and sincere, using the history of art as both a source of objective and subjective material.

Finnbogi Pétursson (b. 1959) studied at the Icelandic College of Art and Crafts and the Jan van Eyck Akademie. His innovative and eccentric oeuvre hinges upon the conceptual treatment and integration of sound, space, and material. Since he began exhibiting in 1980, Finnbogi’s work often uses implements that produce electronic or acoustic sound—loudspeakers, wires, and instruments—to form sculptures themselves. Many of his installations bridge contemporary technology and elemental phenomena; his work also evokes experiences that cannot be attributed to visual or aural perception but rather a combination, or perhaps transcendence, of the senses. Finnbogi represented Iceland at the Venice Biennale in 2001 with his monumental sound installation Diabolus.

www.finnbogi.com      see LIST#3

Finnur Arnar Arnarson (b. 1965) finds his inspiration in familiar reality. His works have evolved from being relatively realistic—in the form of installations, photographs and texts—toward videos presenting dreamlike, open views of Icelandic nature and nature within ourselves, sometimes with autobiographical references. Themes in his work include alienation from the environment, the objective and subjective experiences of time and space, and technology as an extension of human will and determination. Finnur studied sculpture and mixed media at the Icelandic Academy of Art and Crafts, has worked as a stage and set designer at the Icelandic School of Drama, and has taught at the Iceland Academy of the Arts.

www.this.is/finnur    

Gabríela Fríðriksdóttir (b. 1971) lives and works in Reykjavík. She graduated from the Icelandic College of Art and Crafts in 1997, and in a short time she has come to be a prominent figure within the contemporary Icelandic art scene. Working in various media—sculpture, drawing, painting, sound sculpture and music—her work is strongly characterized by what has come to be called the “sweetness of horror.” Gabríela examines the chaos and excesses of society while playing on the borders of dreams and reality, drawing from a fantastic mythology of her own creation. In 2005 Gabríela was Iceland’s representative at the Venice Biennale.

www.i8.is     see LIST#1, #2, #11

Geirþrúður Finnbogadóttir Hjörvar

Geirþrúður Finnbogadóttir Hjörvar (b. 1977) makes use of diverse media and her complex installations often integrate other art forms such as literature and music into the visual arts. Often enigmatic, her works seem to keep secrets for themselves. Geirþrúður studied at The Iceland Academy of The Arts, Reykjavík and at Rijksakademie Amsterdam. She lives in Amsertdam.

Georg Guðni (b. 1961) studied painting at the Icelandic College of Art and Crafts and the Jan van Eyck Akademie. Over the course of Georg Guðni’s career, he has fluctuated between legible landscapes with open and defined space and paintings where his subject matter assumes more abstract forms. In both can be found his concern for atmospheric and luminescent mediation between his viewers and his mountains and valleys, which he portrays not as specific landscapes but rather as structurally simple references to the concept of the land; also apparent is his interest in geometry and the grid. Perception of nature and perception of art join seamlessly in his paintings.

www.georggudni.com

Guðjón Bjarnason (b. 1959), one of the founders of the Icelandic School of Architecture, has also taught at the Rhode Island School of Design as well as other universities in New York and Verona. His systematic and reductivist work—whether in the form of steel or bronze sculptures, oil on canvas or works on paper—treads the line between representation and abstraction, exploring through his own semiotic systems the origins of consciousness and thought.
see LIST#15, #16

Guðjón Ketilson

Guðjón Ketilsson (b.1956) studied Fine Art at the Academy of Icelandic Art and at Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, Canada, from 1974 -´80. Ketilsson mainly works with drawing and sculpture, mostly from wood. The human body is central to his works, its absence and/or its very presence.
His study of the human condition is through its primary vehicle, the body. Through its absence, time, memory and history can be explored. Ketilsson is inspired by the body as portrayed in Renaissance painting, as well as in details of our everyday connection to our own bodies, from our clothing and hairdo´s, to shoes that change and adjust to the size, temperature and movement of the body.

www.this.is/gudjonketilsson.is

Guðrún Kristjánsdóttir (b. 1950), who lives and works in Reykjavík, studied at the Reykjavík School of Art and the École des Beaux-Arts in France. Formally, many of Guðrún’s artworks are examinations of the effects of atmosphere and light on mountainsides; thematically, they are musings on the strain between distance and closeness, movement and stillness. Though painting has long been her primary medium, in recent years she has been using video in conjunction with painting, often exploring the boundaries between the two by reproducing videoworks in oil on her canvases. Guðrún captures a land of constant changes, her attention shifting at the edge of abstract and some newly-defined surreal.

www.gudrun.is      see LIST#7

Guðrún Vera

Guðrún Vera (b. 1966) has been focused on the human form ever since her Figure doing nothing in 1996. Working in Plastilina, a permanently soft modeling clay, she stages her bald, naked figures in installations that place them more in relation with each other than with the viewer. Sometimes passive and defenseless, sometimes contemplative and observant, the androgynous bodies balance stylized features and naturalistic postures; in other works, infants with roots in the place of legs hover between sleep and death in an aura of silent unease. Regardless of their situation, Guðrún Vera’s figures speak to the fragility, vulnerability, and innocence of human life.

this.is/veransu/vera

Gunnhildur Hauksdóttir (b. 1972) lives and works in Berlin. Having graduated from the Iceland Academy of the Arts in 2001 and from the Sandberg Institute, Amsterdam in 2005, Gunnhildur has been a member of the Dieter Roth Academy under the guidance of Björn Roth since 1998. Gunnhildur’s work retains many of the characteristics associated with Reykjavík’s former Yellow House group, perhaps most obviously in the use of inexpensive materials and rough execution. Her videos, installations and performances have an air of impermanence—a temporary quality reflecting the urgency associated with an art space that was always operating just days ahead of the wrecking crew.

www.this.is/gunnhildur      see LIST#4

Halldór Ásgeirsson

Hannes Lárusson (b. 1955) is one of the leading performance artists in Iceland. For over twenty-five years, his prolific production—which includes conceptual and performance art and installation in many media—has led to a celebrated exhibition record that spans a variety of countries in Europe as well as the U.S. and Canada.

Hannes studied at The Whitney Museum Independent Study Program, New York, received a BA in philosophy from the University of Iceland, and an MFA from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, Halifax. In addition to his work as an artist, he is also active as a writer, critic and lecturer.

Haraldur Jónsson (b. 1961) lives and works in Reykjavík. He graduated from the Icelandic College of Art and Crafts in 1987, the Kunstakademie, Düsseldorf in 1990, and studied at the Institut des Hautes Études en Arts Plastiques, Paris. In his work Haraldur focuses on everyday emotions, represented and evoked through use of various media. His drawings, photographs, sculptures, videos, and sound installations reflect his interest in psychological subtlety, demonstrating responses to different situations that as adults we often overlook or have grown accustomed to. The interplay between written and spoken language, perception, and feelings is a central theme in his art.

www.this.is/comet     see LIST#6, #22

Heimir Björgúlfsson (b. 1975) was born in Reykjavík and lives and works in Los Angeles and Amsterdam. Heimir is a natural historian at a time when nature has gone awry. He creates meticulous color drawings of his native country’s bird population in the tradition of observational portraits that fill natural history museums. However, each of the birds in Heimir’s works has something out of the ordinary about them—an enlarged beak, a deformed skull or a misplaced eye. The pristine beauty of the Arctic region is fallen, and neutral observation of the Enlightenment has been replaced by an odd fondness for jaundiced imperfection at the dark end of days.

www.bjorgulfsson.com

Hekla Dögg Jónsdóttir

www.this.is/hekla   see LIST#17

Helgi Þorgils Friðjónsson

Helgi Þorgils Friðjónsson (b. 1953) works primarily as a painter; he studied at the Icelandic College of Art and Crafts and at De Vrije Academie and the Jan van Eyck Academie. His paintings employ a mythological symbolism that simultaneously reduces and elevates man to an equal among all other forms of life.
Helgi represented Iceland at the Venice Biennale in 1990.

www.helgi-fridjonsson.com/      see LIST#5

Helgi Þórsson

Hildur Bjarnadóttir

www.hildur.net    see LIST#5

Hlynur Hallsson (b. 1968) lives and works in Hanover and Akureyri. He studied at the Akureyri School of Visual Arts, the Icelandic College of Art and Crafts, and at FH Hannover, HfbK Hamburg, Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. Since 1999 he has held lectureships at the Akureyri School of Visual Arts and the Iceland Academy of the Arts. Through photography, text, installation, and performance, Hlynur explores concepts such as political imperialism, national and cultural borders in a globalizing world, and communication across lines of difference. Drawing inspiration from a wide variety of sources, his material ranges from transnational politics to everyday activities such as going to the swimming pool or building snow houses.
www.hallsson.de

Hrafnhildur Arnardóttir

Hrafnhildur Arnardóttir (b. 1969) crosses boundaries between visual art, fashion, and performance, but her trademark is her medium: hair, both artificial and real. She creates works of fancy and fantasy, whether in the form of intricately woven wigs used in performance or installation, wall hangings evoking the extravagance of the Baroque, or murals of computer-generated patterns of densely arranged braids. Hrafnhildur frequently collaborates with musicians and other visual artists; recent collaborations include an installation with composer Nico Muhly, as well as a window installation at MoMA composed of swirling masses of colorful artificial hair highlighted by neon lights.

www.shoplifter.us    see LIST#19

Hrafnkell Sigurðsson (b. 1963) studied at the Icelandic College of Art and Crafts, the Jan van Eyck Academie, Maastricht, and Goldsmith College, London. Through performance, video, installation, and photography, Hrafnkell’s art examines transitory elements of man’s relationship with nature and plays with ideas of reversal and ritual, corporeal masculinity and transcendence of the body. His photographic series include images of empty tents in the snow, houses under construction, and most recently, mirror images of trash whose front panels open to reveal quiet snowy panoramas. Hrafnkell has exhibited worldwide, from Europe to East Asia, Tasmania to the Louvre, and he was granted the Icelandic Visual Art Award in 2007.
www.hrafnkellsigurdsson.com

Hreinn Friðfinnsson (b. 1943), who, as a founder of the avant-garde group SÚM with three other artists in 1965, is one of the originators of Icelandic conceptual art and continues to be at the forefront of the art scene in Iceland. His photographs, paintings, text and mixed media works are poetic and philosophical explorations of everyday human experience. Transcending the mundane materials of which they are made, his simple, almost ethereal pieces paradoxically evoke the strongest of emotions. Hreinn represented Iceland at the 1993 Venice Biennale, received second prize in the Carnegie Art Award in 2000, and has lived and worked in Amsterdam since the early 1970s.

www.i8.is     see LIST#14

Huginn Þór Arason

Hulda Hákon

Hulda Hákon (b. 1956) is a sculptor and painter whose work hinges on human relations, sometimes with reference to Icelandic mythology. Text always plays an important role in Hulda’s work, and while it most often originates from the daily life, when she has integrated words into her art her viewer is confronted with a new and multi-layered sense of reality.
Hulda graduated from the Icelandic College of Art and Crafts in 1981 and from the School of Visual Arts in New York in 1983.

Hulda Stefánsdóttir

Hulda Stefánsdóttir (b. 1972) studied at the Icelandic College of Arts and Crafts and The School of Visual Arts in New York. Her interest in the color white—or, in her words, “the idea of that which is hidden in the light”—has led her also to explore the colors of human flesh. Working on canvas, which she considers comparable to skin, as well as with photographs, Hulda juxtaposes the two media in close arrangements where monochromatic paintings and snapshots merge with each other as well as with the walls on which they hang.

Húbert Nói (b. 1961) studied biology, geology and chemistry at the University of Iceland in addition to his studies at the Icelandic College of Art and Crafts. While painting forms the core of his artwork, his diverse oeuvre includes drawings, etchings, videos, and even a CD of real-time music for astronauts. His creative work can be conceptualized as a sort of contemporary alchemy: transforming the scientific into the spiritual. While he literally measures and maps physical landscapes, he also measures human emotions; the synthesis becomes his art. Húbert Nói’s works often take their names from GPS locations. The video piece HE – 3 can be seen as a metaphor for creative action.

www.hubertnoi.com      see LIST#17

The Icelandic Love Corporation is a group of three artists: Sigrún Hrólfsdóttir (b. 1973), Jóní Jónsdóttir (b. 1972) and Eirún Sigurðardóttir (b. 1971). They have worked together since graduating from the Icelandic College of Art and Crafts in 1996. Using nearly all possible media—including performance, video, photography, and installation—the ILC confronts the seriousness of the art world with works that blend playfulness, humor and spectacle with refreshing genuineness and subtle social critique. Their art and performance often incorporates ideas of traditional femininity, but they are always women on their own terms. The members of the ILC have lived and studied in New York, Berlin, Copenhagen, and are currently based in Reykjavík.
www.ilc.is       see LIST#14

Ingibjörg Birgisdóttir

www.myspace.com/iiiinga

Ingólfur Arnarsson (b. 1956) studied at the Reykjavík School of Art, the Icelandic College of Art and Crafts and the Jan van Eyck Academie, Maastricht. Since 2000 he has been a professor at the Iceland Academy of the Arts. Drawing has always played an important role in his work; it renders thought lucid and endows it with form through means of lines and cross-hatching. Although his style has changed throughout the course of his career, features can be found in his earliest drawings that still characterize and unify his work.

Ívar Valgarðsson

Ívar Valgarðsson’s (b. 1954) art is quiet and contemplative, with references to minimalism and conceptualism. Working with materials typically used for home renovation, such as wall paint, tape, and filler, Ívar questions the interaction between the properties of a work of art and the properties of its setting, which often begin to overlap. In addition, his interest in the words and ideas we attach to colors leads him to explore how our experience of color in nature might differ from our experience of color in built environments.

www.i8.is

Jón Óskar

Jón Óskar (b. 1954) stands out on the Icelandic art scene for his paintings of conflict and even violence—not in representation, but rather in their process of creation. Subjecting his monumental canvases to corrosive chemicals, hot wax, or other forms of damage, then repairing them again, his finished paintings—often dark both in color and style—bear the scars of this treatment. In his photographs, drawings, and prints, he similarly explores the conflict between the surface of the picture plane and the subjects he portrays, whether they are portraits, historical themes, or personal references.

www.jonoskar.org      see LIST#8

Katrín Elvarsdóttir

Katrín Elvarsdóttir (b. 1964) graduated from Art Institute of Boston in 1993 with a BFA. She also studied photography at Brevard Community College in 1990, and earned a BA in French from the University of Iceland in 1988.
The moments she captures are timeless not in the sense of a classic moment or a precious memory that syncs in our everyday comprehension of things the images she presents are more about a passing when our eyes glance over something casually, a journey between a nondescript neighborhood between two destinations, a state before one of our emotions come into full bloom.
Yet her images are straight forward and clear, and she photographs objects we have names for. Instead of telling a story of the obvious, the narrative elements in Katrín’s photographs are hidden, or evasive, though not incomplete like having a missing piece to a puzzle.
http://www.katrinelvarsdottir.com/

Katrín Sigurðardóttir (b. 1967) studied at the Icelandic College of Art and Crafts and the San Francisco Art Institute, and she currently lives in New York. Katrín’s interests lie in the perception of space, playing with the memories that her sculptures and installations might generate within each viewer. Weaving together landscape, architecture, and design, she creates miniatures that resemble models or toys, sometimes presented in crates that unfold or suitcases that open, sometimes as room-sized installations. Her miniatures evoke the theme of an unbridgeable distance that is both physical and historical, involving the overlapping notions of personal memory and historical association.

www.katrinsigurdardottir.info     see LIST#11

Kristín Helga Káradóttir (b. 1968) engages with video, site-specific installation and performative practice as a response to the psychic dimensions of institutional spaces. Kristín currently lives and works in Reykjavík. Her work has been shown at the Arnesinga Art Museum (Hveragerði), the Reykjavík Art Museum, Frisör Beige in Berlin and the art festival of the Associazione artistico culturale ricreativa (Monfalcone, Italy), as well as in a recent collaboration with the Icelandic band Ulpa.
She has studied at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Art, the Reykjavík School of Art, and received her BFA from the Iceland Academy of the Arts in 2004.

Kristján Guðmundsson (b. 1961) lives and works in Reykjavík. His work is defined by the essential, both in form and concept—working as he describes “within the tension that exists between nothing and something.” His acute aesthetic investigations include his Drawing series, a search for the essence of drawing in the juxtaposition of graphite and paper in a variety of three-dimensional forms. Kristján represented Iceland in the 1984 Venice Biennale.

www.i8.is     see LIST#23

Kristleifur Björnsson

Kristleifur Björnsson (b.1973) lives and works in Berlin. Kristleifur did his studies at HGB – Academy of Visual Arts in Leipzig, Germany under the guidance of prof . Timm Rautert until graduating with excellence in 2003. Kristleifur has exhibited widely in central Europe and Iceland in the last years. He recently participated in Street and Studio, an extensive exhibition on urban history of photography at TATE modern in London and Fotomuseum Volkwang in Essen, Germany.

www.kristleifur.com

Libia Castro and Ólafur Ólafsson

Ólafur Árni Ólafsson (b. 1973) and Libia Pérez de Siles de Castro (b. 1970, Spain) live in Rotterdam and have collaborated and exhibited internationally since 1996. The work of this artist duo is always on the move. Sometimes taking elements from earlier projects with them to their next destination, they once again enter into a relationship with their current surroundings. By means of portraying, mapping, intervening and informally collaborating with people they meet, they explore space, the environment and its dynamics in different possible and impossible ways. Their projects have an open-ended structure and often result in playful, poetic, subversive and critical works.
www.libia-olafur.com    see LIST#18, #23

Magnús Árnason (b. 1973) graduated from the Akademie der bildenden Künste in Vienna in 2003. Having drawn much local and international attention for his exhibitions, it has been stated that his is the darkest hope of Icelandic art. Magnus probes into the morbid side of the human imagination through his imagery reflecting horror, Icelandic mysticism, the gothic, and death metal and fairy tales in his films and installations, creating a world somewhere between magic and nightmare. A recurring character in his films and performances, Benedikt, is said to have emerged from the Icelandic lava fields.

www.magnusarnason.com      see LIST#2

Margrét H. Blöndal (b. 1970) graduated with a BFA from the Icelandic College of Art and Crafts in 1993 and an MFA from Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers University in 1997. She was granted the prestigious Richard Serra Award in 2002, was nominated for the Icelandic Art Awards in 2006 and was chosen for Manifesta 7.
Through her sculpture, photography, and drawings, Margrét seeks in her art to evoke a geology of the domestic. She encourages her viewers to see in the home the strata of matter and subtle accumulations, attesting not to eruptions or seismic movement, but the sheer everyday business of living.

www.margrethblondal.net      see LIST#12, #18, #23

Markmið

Markmið/Aim is a collaborative project between the artists Helgi Hjaltalín Eyjólfsson (b. 1968) and Pétur Örn Friðriksson (b. 1967) that has been ongoing since 2000. Gadget art, invention art and boys’ art are terms that have been used to describe Markmið. Helgi studied at the Icelandic College of Art and Crafts, at Kunstakademie Düsseldorf and Akademie voor Kunst en Industrie, Enschede and at the San Francisco Art Institute. Pétur studied at Akureyri School of Visual Art, the Icelandic College of Art and Crafts, and Akademie voor Kunst en Industrie, Enschede.

Ólafur S. Gíslason

Ólafur S. Gíslason‘s work can be described as a balancing act between artistic and social issues. His work is constructed around the concept of multiple participation and is often characterized by site specificy. In a given context he creates a situation, a place, to enable creative and social processes to take place. Even though he works often with contextualized economic and social issues, the individual experience, the story of the participants, remains the core of the work. Ólafur (b. 1962) lives in Reykjavík and Hamburg. He studied at the Icelandic College of Arts and Crafts, Reykjavík and Hochschule für Bildende Künste, Hamburg.

Olga Bergmann

www.this.is/olga

Ólöf Nordal (b. 1961) lives and works in Reykjavík. She studied at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam and received an MFA from the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan as well as an MFA in sculpture from Yale University. In 2005, she received the prestigious Richard Serra Award. The politics of presentation of animal specimens as well as the fascination with the monstrous are at play in Ólöf’s photographs and sculptures. Her work continues to explore the folkloric traditions surrounding Icelandic nature as well as those scientific practices that, in their seeking to preserve and display nature, also fictionalize it.

www.olofnordal.com      see LIST#3

Ósk Vilhjálmsdóttir (b. 1962) studied at the Icelandic Academy of Art and Crafts and Hochschule der Künste in Berlin. Her work stems from her sense of political commitment, often addressing tension between the public and the private and investigating the potential that art holds as a mechanism for dialogue and social change. Seeking to critically challenge consumerism, globalization, the exploitation of the environment, and the needs of individuals to navigate an increasingly complex daily existence, Ósk’s shows—which include photography, video and installations—are often made in cooperation with the public, such as her series of works made with children and teenagers.

www.this.is/osk

Pétur Thomsen (b. 1973) studied art history and archaeology at the Université Paul Valéry Montpellier III, Montpellier; photography at École Supérieure des Métiers Artistiques, Montpellier and at École Nationale Supérieur de la Photographie (ENSP), Arles.

Pétur depicts the Icelandic landscape by following straight compositional rules. In most of his photos the landscape fills the surface completely, with the result that nature elements attain a graphic quality in the sense that they give the image a specific rhythm. The landscape shows the violent intrusion of mankind into Iceland’s nature. Whether seen as social criticism or as a romantic statement, his work bears witness to the rapid change of Iceland’s land- and cityscapes.

http://www.peturthomsen.is

Ragnar Kjartansson (b. 1976) has built his career upon bold and spirited experiments across media. Working simultaneously as an artist and a musician, Ragnar considers himself primarily a performance artist influenced by theater. His electronic group, Trabant, plays on the boundaries of rock and roll and performance art; Ragnar also creates videos, paintings and installations that are often linked with his performances. His pieces are characterized by the interplay between contradicting feelings—sorrow and happiness, horror and beauty, drama and humor—and frequently rely on repetition or “the loop.” Ragnar, who studied at the Iceland Academy of the Arts, is the youngest artist to represent Iceland in the Venice Biennale (2009).

www.ragnarkjartansson.com     see LIST#7, #16,

#18, #23

Ragnhildur Stefánsdóttir

Ragnhildur Stefánsdóttir (b. 1958) studied at the Icelandic College of Art and Crafts and at the Minneapolis College of Art and Craft, and she received her MFA from the College of Fine Art at Carnegie Mellon University in 1987.

JBK Ransú

www.this.is/veransu/ransu

www.ruri.is      see LIST#13

Sara Björnsdóttir (b. 1962), who studied at the Chelsea College of Art and Design in London and at the Icelandic College of Art and Crafts, currently lives and works in Reykjavík. In her multifaceted work, Sara mirrors our experiences of daily life by means of her self-exposing performances, photographs and videos, but she is also an attentive observer of our external environments. As she incessantly reveals herself through her art, she gives us the tacit approval to confess to ourselves our beauty as well as our failures.

Sara Riel (b. 1980) makes artwork in all kind of sizes and shapes and every material and mediums are accepted. She uses the methods that the world has to offer, to their full extent, to lift certain events and experiences, stories and moments up into reality. The pieces tell stories but are at the same time ambiguous and open. They are meant to activate the imagination of the viewer and induce thoughts about the passing moment. In comparison with literature and music they are rather poems than novels and sounds rather than songs. Saras extractions are based on and point to Urban art, the cartoon tradition, idea-art, minimalism and graphic design. Sara graduated from Kunsthochschule Berlin-Weissensee 2005.

http://www.sarariel.com/

Sigga Björg Sigurðardóttir (b. 1977) graduated from the Iceland Academy of the Arts in 2001 and received her master’s from the Glasgow School of Art in 2004. Her drawings of fantastic creatures—somewhere between human and animal, simultaneously grotesque and beautiful, but always imbued with a sense of feeling—perhaps point to an underlying mythology in her work, whether particularly Icelandic or universally human. Like characters removed from a storybook, Sigga Björg’s subjects contend with everyday life in a manner that evokes both humor and pathos. “There is a Party at Paracide Park Tonight” is a five-minute animated film set to a techno song composed by the artist.

www.siggabjorg.com      see LIST#11

Sigrún Ólafsdóttir

www.sigurdurarni.com     see LIST#17

Sigurður Guðjónsson (b. 1975) lives and works in Reykjavík. He has studied video, sound/music, photography and sculpture at the Akademie der Bildenden Kunste in Vienna and the Iceland Academy of the Arts. Sigurður also has a background in music and is a member of the death-metal band Cranium. This experience resonates clearly in his work, where energy and deep seriousness combine with two raw natural forces: those of human nature and nature itself. With equal attention to music and image in his atmospheric films, Sigurður’s work exudes mysticism, desolation, the grotesque and the bleak, and reflects a tangle of emotions that are universal and timeless.

www.sigurdurgudjonsson.net     see LIST#9

Sigurður Guðmundsson’s (b. 1942) work is difficult to separate from the energetic, humorous, intelligent artist himself. His prolific and highly individual body of work includes photographs, novels, and giant replicas of chocolates in stone, metal, and lacquer. Since the 1960s, his varied and at times seemingly cacophonic achievements have gradually grown into an oeuvre that is also vigorous, succulent and original. Guðmundsson is one of Iceland’s most international artists, with homes and studios in Holland, Iceland and Sweden, and recently in Xiamen and Beijing. He has exhibited widely in Europe and has had commissions for major public works in the Nordic countries and in Central Europe.

www.i8.is

Sirra Sigrún Sigurðardóttir

Sirra Sigrún Sigurðardóttir (b. 1977) graduated from the Iceland Academy of the Arts in 2001 and continued her studies in Art Theory at the University of Iceland from 2003 to 2004.
Her artistic focal point is the human body as both an object and phenomenon. Working in a wide variety of media and incorporating sound into her work, Sirra critically examines people’s social and structural surroundings in her art. Sirra was one of the founding members of Reykjavík’s Kling & Bang Gallery in 2003.

Snorri Ásmundsson (b. 1966) is an artist who seeks to affect society through public events. He has intentionally disturbed the Icelandic community for some time with his extensive and remarkable performances in which he works with social taboos of politics, sex and religion. He has observed the reactions of society when commonly accepted values are turned upside down—for example, when a powerless individual takes into his own hands authority that normally is given to others by different predetermined rules. Howsoever people react to these grandstand performances, Snorri critically challenges social and religious values and seeks sharp responses, thus examining the limits of his fellow man and of himself.

flotakona.com     see LIST#11

Steina Vasulka (b. 1940) lives and works in Santa Fé, New Mexico. Together with her husband and collaborator, Woody Vasulka, she has been instrumental in the development of video technology and its acceptance as art. Widely regarded as one of the most internationally distinguished video artists, Steina represented Iceland at the Venice Biennale in 1997.
As she says of her work, “My video images primarily hinge upon an undefined sense of time with no earth gravity. It is like a duty to show what cannot be seen except with the eye of media.” Born in Reykjavík, she is a classically trained violinist who once played with the Iceland National Orchestra.

www.vasulka.org      see LIST#4, #5

Steingrimur Eyfjörd

Steingrimur Eyfjörd (b. 1954) is one of the foremost of a generation of artists who came to prominence in Iceland during the 1970s. His work employs a wide variety of media, including photography, comic strip, video, painting, sculpture, performance, writing and installation. His art may appear equally diverse conceptually: founded on influences as disparate as folk tales, Icelandic sagas, women’s fashion magazines, religion, superstition, critical theory and many other current topics, Eyfjörd’s chains of association intersect at a nodal point of multiple meaning, forming a body of work that is multi-layered and at times perplexing yet always reveals an articulate and unexpected approach to the issues at hand. Steingrimur represented Iceland at the Venice Biennale in 2007.

www.this.is/endless

Steinunn Þórarinsdóttir (b. 1955), who lives and works in Reykjavík, received her training as a sculptor at the University of Portsmouth in England and the Accademia di Belle Arti, Bologna. Having exhibited widely in Europe, Japan, North America and Australia for over twenty years, Steinunn has received numerous commissions in Iceland and abroad for both indoor and outdoor site-specific works. Her figural sculptures, made of cast iron, bronze, aluminum, steel, and/or glass, are often life-sized anonymous and androgynous bodies. Visually austere and stark but manifesting a sense of psychological interiority, Steinunn’s sculptures are archetypal representations of the modesty and frailty within the human condition.

www.steinunnth.com      see LIST#20

Svava Björnsdóttir

Svava Björnsdóttir (b. 1952) might take stylistic cues from previous generations of Icelandic sculptors and architects, but her sculptures have a distinctive style of their own. Made from dyed raw paper pulp, Svava’s large-scale wall hangings and freestanding works blur the boundaries between relief, architecture, and painting; they also work with the dissonance between the appearance of density and the reality of weightlessness. Biomorphic shapes formed with soft convex curves—while sometimes joined by contour lines inspired by classical architecture or industrial design—take command of Svava’s exhibition spaces, creating an active dynamic between art, environment, and the audience itself.
see LIST#25

Tumi Magnússon (b. 1957) studied at AKI Enschede in the Netherlands and at Universidad de Granada. Until 2005 he was a professor at the Iceland Academy of the Arts; he currently teaches in Copenhagen. Tumi provoked immediate attention for his paintings in the mid-eighties and since then has been considered one of the more notable painters of his generation. Through the years his paintings have become less and less conventional, but his confidence and skill in the use of his medium have enabled him to explore new paths, including video installation and digital photography.

www.tumimagnusson.com

Unnar Örn Auðarson

Unnar Örn Auðarson’s (b. 1974) preoccupation with the experience of art institutions has led him to push and pull at the symbolic and physical boundaries of exhibition spaces. Combined with his interest in the critique of systems—political, social, institutional—by means of approaching them intimately and domestically, Unnar stages exhibitions that receive the viewer like a welcome guest. Whether drawing upon content in museum archives or exhibiting archives of his own, Unnar often gives viewers the opportunity to take some part of the exhibition home with them, sometimes in the form of printed material that constitutes another layer of his projects.

Viktoría Guðnadóttir (b. 1969) lives and works in the Netherlands. She received her BA from Akademie voor beeldende kunst in Enschede in 2000 and her master’s at the Dutch Art Institute in Enschede in 2002. Video is among Viktoría’s many ways of expression. Her mostly short video works vary from experimental photographic films to more serious films in which Viktoría attempts to capture and isolate moments of emotion from individuals within groups of people, working with concepts of the spectacle and spectatorship. She also creates sculptures as well as text installations by writing directly on gallery walls.

www.viktoriagud.com

Þór Vigfússon (b. 1954) works with glass, plexiglass, mirrors, and most recently formica to create minimal but powerful wall objects seemingly comprised only of color, texture, and reflection. Deceptively simple, his pieces are constantly changing and engage the viewer in intimate contemplation. Þór studied at the Icelandic Academy of Art and Crafts as well as in the Netherlands.

Þórdís Aðalsteinsdóttir (b. 1975) studied in Reykjavík as well as New York, where she graduated from the School of Visual Arts in 2003. Þórdís’s paintings depict scenes of everyday simplicity played out in a fluid dream world. Her idiosyncratic figurative paintings, with their New York urban influence, are a breath of fresh air to the Icelandic art scene. The subjects—both human and animal—are often represented by unsettling distortions of their natural forms, and they inhabit a bizarre zone somewhere between realist figuration, cartoons, anime and pure fantasy.

www.thordisnyc.blogspot.com/      see LIST#6

Database: www.umm.is - an information portal about Icelandic art and artists.

Introduction of artists listed in the CIA.IS video archive

Database of artists in the online magazine