Current Exhibition
Still Life
June 6 - August 9, 2025
This exhibition features contemporary works in various media that can be classified as an art genre called still life. The subject matter of these works is everyday things, which serve as a reminder of the beauty and transience of life. This branch of art history has existed alongside humanity for centuries, but gained and lost popularity and recognition according to the zeitgeist of each era. The first still life paintings are believed to be ancient Egyptian, from around the 15th century BC. They were painted on the walls of tombs, depicting meat, fish, and grain, believed to be useful to the deceased in the afterlife. During the golden age of Dutch painting in the 16th and 17th centuries, still life paintings became commonplace. Originally, as a means of artistic training in the catching of shadow and light, as well as aesthetics and composition. As time went on, such works were often used for the benefit of the church and were loaded with meaningful symbols intended to evoke the fear of God and remind us of the transience and futility of earthly existence. To this day, still life paintings have developed within all movements of art, impressionism, expressionism, cubism, futurism, dadaism, as well as surrealism, and helped open up the possibilities toward abstraction. Media such as photography and video have been part of still life's discourse, but no matter the medium, these works have remained a strong source of information about everyday life and the parts of history rarely depicted.
Curated by Ingibjörg Jónsdóttir.
About the artists:
Dieter Roth (b. 1930 - d. 1998) was one of the most influential artists of the post-World War II period. He produced a great variety of works in different artistic media, including graphics, drawings, paintings, sculptures, and books, but also installations, assemblages, audio, and media works. Dieter Roth created 524 graphic works during his career, many of which are unique. It is worth mentioning that Roth used all known printing methods (as well as self-invented methods) in creating the works – woodcuts, etchings, copper engravings, aquatints, lithography, silkscreen printing, and more. Dieter Roth was born in Germany, raised in Switzerland, and moved to Iceland in 1957. The artist remains an integral part of Icelandic art history, and his work can be found in major museum collections worldwide. In his later career, he collaborated with his son Björn Roth to widespread acclaim. He represented Switzerland at the Venice Biennale in 1992, and one of his many exhibitions featured a retrospective at the MoMA in New York. He passed in Switzerland in 1998.
Haraldur Jónsson's (b. 1961) different approaches demonstrate much versatility, yet his work always has an unmistakable personal character. Many of his creations are conceived to transform the viewer’s perception of the material. He has produced sculptures that evoke the experience of silence or absence, drawings that deliberately eschew any representation or coherent composition, installations of industrial materials that defy function, and lists of words that refer to human emotions, presented as wallpaper, confounding the distinction between our inner and outer experience. He consistently strives to make visible that which is normally hidden and to give form to that which normally has no dimension or form. Haraldur studied at various art academies in Iceland, France, and Germany. He has held dozens of solo exhibitions, including an extensive retrospective at The Reykjavík Art Museum, and has participated in numerous group exhibitions worldwide. His works remain in major public museum collections in Iceland and private collections in Europe and the United States. Haraldur was the designated City Artist of Reykjavík in 2019 and was selected for the public commission Billboard's Ad Break in 2024.
Hákon Bragason (b. 1993) graduated from the Iceland University of the Arts in 2019 and has been an active participant in the Icelandic art and music scene. He has participated in numerous group exhibitions and art festivals, in addition to having held solo exhibitions. In his works, Hákon works with a variety of media and chooses methods and materials according to each idea. Among the things he uses in his creations are drawings, hardware, interactive installations, virtual reality, websites, and performances. His works are often rooted in a shifted perspective for the viewer, allowing for reconfiguration. Bragason's works were recently selected for the exhibition Vitamin D at the Reykjavík Art Museum in 2024, which gathered emerging artists and their recent works. Further exhibitions include the Reykjavík City Hall, Kaktus in Akureyri, and Korpúlfsstaðir, Reykjavík.
Katrín Elvarsdóttir (b. 1964) studied fine arts and photography in the US. Her photographic works tell fragmented narratives of an ambiguous nature, often playing on the idea of socially collective memory-making. They often serve as a placeholder for enigmatic events that the viewer inadvertently becomes a part of, a story half-realized, half-imagined. Her work might best be described as suggestive, choosing to reside in an unscripted, imagined timelessness, often utilizing cinematic methods, soft focus, and chiaroscuro. Katrín has held several solo exhibitions in Iceland, such as in Gerðarsafn, Kópavogur Art Museum. and Hafnarborg Art Museum. Exhibitions abroad include The Museum of Photography in Seoul, Korea, and The Fotografisk Center in Copenhagen. Katrín has also received several awards. She was nominated for the Deutsche Börse Photographic Prize in 2009 and won the prestigious Eikon prize in Vienna in 2017.
Marta Skoczeń (b. 1994) is a Polish visual artist working with video, photography, and drawing. She graduated from École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris in 2020 (Clément Cogitore studio) and the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw in 2019 (Graphic Art). In her work, she mainly focuses on femininity, memory, and the meeting of past and present, navigating between visual art, cinema, and fashion. Her work, House Without a Key, has received positive acclaim and explores a portrait of a woman faced with confinement, torn between her desire for freedom and her obligations. Skoczeń’s work can be found in the collections of MACBA in Barcelona and Collection Lemaître in France. Her works have been showcased at Palais de Tokyo in Paris and various film festivals worldwide. She has collaborated with brands such as Louis Vuitton and Balenciaga.
Páll Haukur (b. 1981) reflects on the ideological relationships between nature, culture, and the human experience. He continuously interrogates any given notions of meaning, often asking what constitutes an object. His work often represents flux, resulting in an aesthetic experience that constantly demands viewers re-evaluate themselves in relation to the space and objects around them. He continuously uses media that are dependent on time, space, and call for the viewer’s engagement. Páll Haukur studied at the Iceland Academy of the Arts and the California Institute of the Arts. He has exhibited in various galleries and museums, such as the National Gallery of Iceland, the Contemporary Art Museum, the Reykjavík Art Museum, and Galleria Sculptor, Helsinki.
Rósa Gísladóttir’s (b. 1957) three-dimensional works explore the evolution of forms and their shifting meanings throughout history, incorporating modern materials and reflecting on the challenges of consumerism. While she has worked with various materials, she is best known for her plaster sculptures, which take on diverse shapes and sizes. Since the beginning of her career, she has frequently drawn artistic references from architecture and culture. Her work highlights the intrinsic value of still life as an art form, continually engaging with themes such as sustainable development, classicism, and spirituality. Rósa studied fine arts in Germany, Britain, and Iceland. Her works have been exhibited widely locally and abroad, at Scandinavia House in New York, the Saatchi Gallery in London, and the Reykjavík Art Museum, to name a few. She was the first recipient of the Gerður Helgadóttir Sculptural Award in 2020 by the Gerðarsafn Art Museum in Iceland, presented yearly ever since to an artist showcasing excellence within the realm of sculpture and spatial works.
Steina Vasulka (b. 1940) is a pioneer of video art, through her lifelong dialogue with machines – from cathode-ray televisions to digital computer systems, which played a key role in the advancement and evolution of the medium. She began her career as a classically trained violinist, which continuously trickled into her art-making. In 1971, she founded The Kitchen in New York alongside her husband, Woody Vasulka, an experimental institution for video, performance, and cross-disciplinary art. Their complex explorations of the malleability of the image, the interaction of sound and imagery, and the manipulation of energy continue to shape video art history and inspire subsequent generations of artists. Steina has shown at leading institutions internationally, including the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh, and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, the Buffalo AKG Art Museum in New York, and the MIT List Visual Arts Center in Boston, Massachusetts.
Woody Vasulka (b. 1937 - d. 2019) was a pioneering video artist, starting his career in the 1960s. With a background in engineering and film-making, Woody’s main focus was the use of electronic media in art, and he produced an extensive series of videos, some of which can be seen as cataloging the possibilities of new media. His playful experiments with video signals and the making of electronic processing tools helped shape the video medium with his immensely prolific body of work. His magnum opus, The Brotherhood (1990–1998), is currently on view in our gallery. He was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1979, he won the Siemens Media Art Prize, a prestigious award given out by the ZKM Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe, in 1995. His recent exhibitions include the Tate Modern, the Los Angeles County Museum, the Buffalo AKG Art Museum, and more. The artist passed in 2019, in his Santa Fe home.
Curated by Ingibjörg Jónsdóttir.
About the artists:
Dieter Roth (b. 1930 - d. 1998) was one of the most influential artists of the post-World War II period. He produced a great variety of works in different artistic media, including graphics, drawings, paintings, sculptures, and books, but also installations, assemblages, audio, and media works. Dieter Roth created 524 graphic works during his career, many of which are unique. It is worth mentioning that Roth used all known printing methods (as well as self-invented methods) in creating the works – woodcuts, etchings, copper engravings, aquatints, lithography, silkscreen printing, and more. Dieter Roth was born in Germany, raised in Switzerland, and moved to Iceland in 1957. The artist remains an integral part of Icelandic art history, and his work can be found in major museum collections worldwide. In his later career, he collaborated with his son Björn Roth to widespread acclaim. He represented Switzerland at the Venice Biennale in 1992, and one of his many exhibitions featured a retrospective at the MoMA in New York. He passed in Switzerland in 1998.
Haraldur Jónsson's (b. 1961) different approaches demonstrate much versatility, yet his work always has an unmistakable personal character. Many of his creations are conceived to transform the viewer’s perception of the material. He has produced sculptures that evoke the experience of silence or absence, drawings that deliberately eschew any representation or coherent composition, installations of industrial materials that defy function, and lists of words that refer to human emotions, presented as wallpaper, confounding the distinction between our inner and outer experience. He consistently strives to make visible that which is normally hidden and to give form to that which normally has no dimension or form. Haraldur studied at various art academies in Iceland, France, and Germany. He has held dozens of solo exhibitions, including an extensive retrospective at The Reykjavík Art Museum, and has participated in numerous group exhibitions worldwide. His works remain in major public museum collections in Iceland and private collections in Europe and the United States. Haraldur was the designated City Artist of Reykjavík in 2019 and was selected for the public commission Billboard's Ad Break in 2024.
Hákon Bragason (b. 1993) graduated from the Iceland University of the Arts in 2019 and has been an active participant in the Icelandic art and music scene. He has participated in numerous group exhibitions and art festivals, in addition to having held solo exhibitions. In his works, Hákon works with a variety of media and chooses methods and materials according to each idea. Among the things he uses in his creations are drawings, hardware, interactive installations, virtual reality, websites, and performances. His works are often rooted in a shifted perspective for the viewer, allowing for reconfiguration. Bragason's works were recently selected for the exhibition Vitamin D at the Reykjavík Art Museum in 2024, which gathered emerging artists and their recent works. Further exhibitions include the Reykjavík City Hall, Kaktus in Akureyri, and Korpúlfsstaðir, Reykjavík.
Katrín Elvarsdóttir (b. 1964) studied fine arts and photography in the US. Her photographic works tell fragmented narratives of an ambiguous nature, often playing on the idea of socially collective memory-making. They often serve as a placeholder for enigmatic events that the viewer inadvertently becomes a part of, a story half-realized, half-imagined. Her work might best be described as suggestive, choosing to reside in an unscripted, imagined timelessness, often utilizing cinematic methods, soft focus, and chiaroscuro. Katrín has held several solo exhibitions in Iceland, such as in Gerðarsafn, Kópavogur Art Museum. and Hafnarborg Art Museum. Exhibitions abroad include The Museum of Photography in Seoul, Korea, and The Fotografisk Center in Copenhagen. Katrín has also received several awards. She was nominated for the Deutsche Börse Photographic Prize in 2009 and won the prestigious Eikon prize in Vienna in 2017.
Marta Skoczeń (b. 1994) is a Polish visual artist working with video, photography, and drawing. She graduated from École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris in 2020 (Clément Cogitore studio) and the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw in 2019 (Graphic Art). In her work, she mainly focuses on femininity, memory, and the meeting of past and present, navigating between visual art, cinema, and fashion. Her work, House Without a Key, has received positive acclaim and explores a portrait of a woman faced with confinement, torn between her desire for freedom and her obligations. Skoczeń’s work can be found in the collections of MACBA in Barcelona and Collection Lemaître in France. Her works have been showcased at Palais de Tokyo in Paris and various film festivals worldwide. She has collaborated with brands such as Louis Vuitton and Balenciaga.
Páll Haukur (b. 1981) reflects on the ideological relationships between nature, culture, and the human experience. He continuously interrogates any given notions of meaning, often asking what constitutes an object. His work often represents flux, resulting in an aesthetic experience that constantly demands viewers re-evaluate themselves in relation to the space and objects around them. He continuously uses media that are dependent on time, space, and call for the viewer’s engagement. Páll Haukur studied at the Iceland Academy of the Arts and the California Institute of the Arts. He has exhibited in various galleries and museums, such as the National Gallery of Iceland, the Contemporary Art Museum, the Reykjavík Art Museum, and Galleria Sculptor, Helsinki.
Rósa Gísladóttir’s (b. 1957) three-dimensional works explore the evolution of forms and their shifting meanings throughout history, incorporating modern materials and reflecting on the challenges of consumerism. While she has worked with various materials, she is best known for her plaster sculptures, which take on diverse shapes and sizes. Since the beginning of her career, she has frequently drawn artistic references from architecture and culture. Her work highlights the intrinsic value of still life as an art form, continually engaging with themes such as sustainable development, classicism, and spirituality. Rósa studied fine arts in Germany, Britain, and Iceland. Her works have been exhibited widely locally and abroad, at Scandinavia House in New York, the Saatchi Gallery in London, and the Reykjavík Art Museum, to name a few. She was the first recipient of the Gerður Helgadóttir Sculptural Award in 2020 by the Gerðarsafn Art Museum in Iceland, presented yearly ever since to an artist showcasing excellence within the realm of sculpture and spatial works.
Steina Vasulka (b. 1940) is a pioneer of video art, through her lifelong dialogue with machines – from cathode-ray televisions to digital computer systems, which played a key role in the advancement and evolution of the medium. She began her career as a classically trained violinist, which continuously trickled into her art-making. In 1971, she founded The Kitchen in New York alongside her husband, Woody Vasulka, an experimental institution for video, performance, and cross-disciplinary art. Their complex explorations of the malleability of the image, the interaction of sound and imagery, and the manipulation of energy continue to shape video art history and inspire subsequent generations of artists. Steina has shown at leading institutions internationally, including the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh, and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, the Buffalo AKG Art Museum in New York, and the MIT List Visual Arts Center in Boston, Massachusetts.
Woody Vasulka (b. 1937 - d. 2019) was a pioneering video artist, starting his career in the 1960s. With a background in engineering and film-making, Woody’s main focus was the use of electronic media in art, and he produced an extensive series of videos, some of which can be seen as cataloging the possibilities of new media. His playful experiments with video signals and the making of electronic processing tools helped shape the video medium with his immensely prolific body of work. His magnum opus, The Brotherhood (1990–1998), is currently on view in our gallery. He was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1979, he won the Siemens Media Art Prize, a prestigious award given out by the ZKM Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe, in 1995. His recent exhibitions include the Tate Modern, the Los Angeles County Museum, the Buffalo AKG Art Museum, and more. The artist passed in 2019, in his Santa Fe home.