NEWSLETTER WINTER 2013
Reykjavík Festival City Reykjavík, along with the Reykjavík Capital Area, is a true event and festival city, with over 40 annual events and festivals on its yearly calendar. Among the most striking of these are various cultural events, where music plays a key role, along with performing arts, visual arts, fashion and design, literature, films and more. Mixed events and festivals such as the Winter Lights Festival, Reykjavík Arts Festival, Gay Pride and Reykjavík Culture Night are immensely popular among the locals in Iceland, attracting up to one third of the population to participate. Sports events of various kinds have become more apparent in the event scene in Reykjavík with the annual Horse Festival being the most prominent newcomer. In 2011, Reykjavík was awarded the IFEA World Festival and Event City Award. The city was given the award because of its
Zoom Out – Iceland’s largest visual arts exhibition The largest visual arts exhibition that has ever been held in Iceland will be opened at Reykjavik Art Museum - Kjarvalsstaðir on 2 February. The exhibition is called Zoom Out and is presented as part of the celebration of the 40th year anniversary of Kjarvalsstaðir. This unusual exhibition will give visitors a rare opportunity to see the Reykjavik Art Museum’s vast collection of Icelandic art. Artworks in a variety of media will be shown in a constantly changing display over a three month period. The exhibition hall will be in state of a perpetual flux, as art handlers constantly install new works and remove others, even as visitors roam through the
large number of events and festivals, compared to the small size of the city, as well as the ambition that every festival holds, the variety of the events and festivals and for attracting international artists to many of those festivals to exhibit their art. Reykjavík’s cultural life has flourished in the past years and decades and the city is a true meeting place of different trends and influences. The cultural life is characterised by the atmosphere of a cosmopolitan city, along with Icelandic cultural uniqueness. It can be stated that it doesn’t boast historically known and renowned cultural institutions like many other western capital cities. That fact however creates a valuable space to pass the cultural restraints of the past and its dividing norms and values to build a progressive and eventful future.
gallery space. This is an opportunity to get an unedited view of Icelandic art, for everything will be brought out of storage and displayed without curatorial pre-selection. The exhibition is open until 20 May 2013. Visitors can at the same time see the exhibition, Kjarval Complete at Kjarvalsstaðir. This show offers the opportunity to see hundreds of works by Jóhannes S. Kjarval, one of Iceland’s leading artists of the 20th century. The exhibition is hung in the manner of the salon, with pictures from floor to ceiling, in no particular order. The exhibition will bring out unexpected juxtapositions, disregarding all themes, periods, subjects and chronology. The viewer will approach Kjarval’s work without any guidance, and look into the artist’s world on his/her own terms.
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