musician painter performance artist sculptor singer
Kjartansson (his name is pronounced RAG-ner kuh-YART-un-sun) was born in 1976 in Reykjavík, where he still lives today. His mother, Guðrún Ásmundsdóttir, is a well-known actress in Iceland and used to perform with his father, Kjartan Ragnarsson, now a director and playwright.
Kjartansson"s work has been exhibited widely. Solo exhibitions have been held at the Migros Museum fur Gegenwartskunst in Zurich, the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo in Turin, Frankfurter Kunstverein, and the BAWAG Contemporary in Vienna. Song, his first American solo museum show, was organized by the Carnegie Museum of Art in 2011, and traveled to the Museum of Contemporary Art in North Miami and the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston.
In 2014 Kjartansson was shortlisted for the Artes Mundi prize, exhibiting his nine-screen video work, The Visitors, at the Turner House Gallery, Penarth, Wales.
The Visitors was exhibited at the inaugural exhibition at the Broad Museum in Los Angeles in September, 2015. Kjartansson is represented by Luhring Augustine in New York and i8 Gallery in Reykjavik.
He is a former member of the Icelandic band Trabant.
