A solo exhibition of the works of the brightest star of contemporary Icelandic art, Ragnar Kjartansson, will open in Kumu

The first Estonian solo exhibition of the works of the Icelandic video artist and painter Ragnar Kjartansson will open in the Kumu Art Museum on 16 May. The display will include six large-scale works from 2004–2025. The exhibition A Boy and a Girl and a Bush and a Bird offers insights into the oeuvre of one of the most fascinating and idiosyncratic artists in the contemporary international art scene, an artist who draws inspiration from pop music, recent and classic art history and, indirectly, from political upheavals. The exhibition is being curated by Anders Härm.

The Great Hall of Kumu will display three recent works by Ragnar Kjartansson: the video installations No Tomorrow (2022) and A Boy and a Girl and a Bush and a Bird (2025), the latter providing the title for the exhibition, and the series of paintings Weekdays in Arcadia (2025), painted specifically for the Kumu exhibition. The artist’s earlier installations Mercy (2004), Variation on Meat Joy (2013) and Figures in the Landscape (2018), displayed in Kumu’s project rooms, enter into dialogues with works in the permanent exhibition.

“The central motifs in Ragnar Kjartansson’s art are said to be love, identity, melancholia, masculinity, strength and powerlessness. Yet this simplistic description is undermined by his delving into the conventions of art history and playing with them: a subtle dialogue with the classics of feminist art and the tradition of landscape painting, ruthless self-irony and self-criticism, and uncompromising ridicule of violence and power,” said the exhibition curator, Anders Härm.

Ragnar Kjartansson first gained international fame in the Icelandic pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2009. He has been the most sought-after Icelandic, and possibly even Nordic, artist over the past decade, and his solo exhibitions have taken place in MoMA and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, in the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, in the Barbican Centre in London and in the Louisiana Museum near Copenhagen, as well as in Stuttgart, Zürich, Helsinki, Washington and elsewhere.

The exhibition is accompanied by public and educational programmes. The opening programme on Saturday, 17 May will include a guided tour by the curator, Anders Härm, at 12.30 p.m. At 2 p.m. there will be a tour in English with the artist Ragnar Kjartansson, who will also participate in an artist talk moderated by Ann Mirjam Vaikla, starting at 3.30 p.m. The Kumu Courtyard Festival, inspired by the exhibition and titled Icelandic Currents, will take place on 7 June. On that day, the inner courtyard of Kumu will be full of creative people linked to Iceland and workshops inspired by Iceland and Nordic countries. There will be exhibition tours, live music and delicious food inspired by the North.

A Boy and a Girl and a Bush and a Bird will remain open in the Kumu Art Museum until 21 September 2025.

Exhibition team:
Curator: Anders Härm
Exhibition designers: Anders Härm and Aleksander Meresaar
Graphic designer: Tuuli Aule
Technical managers: Siim Hiis, Aleksander Meresaar and Mati Schönberg
Coordinator: Anastassia Langinen
Artist’s studio manager: Lilja Gunnarsdóttir
Artist’s technical manager: Christopher McDonald