Press Release | Recent and newly commissioned work by Ragnar Kjartansson for winter show at Goodwood Art Foundation
Taking full advantage of Goodwood Art Foundation’s spectacular landscape and gallery spaces, the exhibition will be a rare opportunity to see work by Kjartansson across multiple media including video, sculptures and paintings as well as a specially commissioned outdoor installation for the winter woodlands of the Foundation.
Highlights of the exhibition devoted to recent works, includes No Tomorrow (2022), a hypnotic six-channel video installation featuring eight female performers from the Iceland Dance Company moving between screens, singing, and playing acoustic guitars, developed in collaboration with choreographer Margrét Bjarnadóttir and composer Bryce Dessner; a large-scale ceramic installation Guilt and Fear (2022), and Weekdays in Arcadia (2025), a series of paintings which depict Kjartansson’s experience of shepherding in southern Iceland.
Outdoors works include a major new commission for Goodwood Art Foundation’s wooded landscape, Nightmare, reflecting themes of horror and internal turmoil in material form, as well as Epic Waste of Love and Understanding (2023), a large-scale installation that emulates a classic public monument, drawing on the language of 19th century memorial architecture.
Ragnar Kjartansson (b. 1976) lives and works in Reykjavík. He engages multiple artistic mediums, creating video installations, performances, drawings, and paintings that draw upon historical and cultural references. An underlying pathos and irony connect his works, with each deeply influenced by the comedy and tragedy of classical theatre. The artist blurs the distinctions between mediums, approaching his painting practice as performance, likening his films to paintings, and his performances to sculpture. Throughout, Kjartansson conveys an interest in beauty and its banality, and he uses durational, repetitive performance as a form of exploration.
Alongside the work of Ragnar Kjartansson, other artists featured in the landscape this winter will include the recently opened ‘Magic Square #3’ (1978/2026) by Hélio Oiticica, as well as works by Nancy Holt, Yayoi Kusama, Lee Ufan, Isamu Noguchi, Susan Philipsz, Eva Rothschild and Rachel Whiteread. Goodwood Art Foundation’s grounds, named Schwarzman Gardens, are designed by the award-winning landscape designer Dan Pearson.
Ragnar Kjartansson, said: “I am interested in the almost fictional or Poussin like elements of the landscape at Goodwood Art Foundation and the idea of encountering monuments to sorrow and shakiness in the woodlands. To somehow make this place between nature and public space personal.”
Eleanor Clarke, Curator, Goodwood Art Foundation, said: “It is an honour to present Kjartansson’s new and recent works at Goodwood Art Foundation for our winter season. These works illustrate the breadth of his multidisciplinary practice and his ability to provoke thought and reflection. Beneath the wit and theatricality of his work lies a sustained engagement with global politics, vulnerability and the emotional complexities of human experience. Across our galleries and deep into the woodland, visitors will discover the artist's blend of humour and melancholy in a uniquely resonant environment.”
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Ragnar Kjartansson: Weekdays in Arcadia
26 November 2026 – 12 April 2027
Goodwood Art Foundation, New Barn Hill, Goodwood, Chichester, PO18 0QP
Find Goodwood Art Foundation on Instagram, Facebook and Linked In.
Winter season opening hours: Thursday – Monday, 10am – 4pm
Tickets £15, under 18s go free
Other concessions available
Notes to Editors
About Ragnar Kjartansson
Ragnar Kjartansson (b.1976) is an Icelandic contemporary artist with a background in theatre and performance. His multidisciplinary practice spans painting, drawing, sculpture, music, film, theatre, performance and choreography, bringing these diverse media together into immersive, interconnected artworks.
Raised by parents who worked as actors, directors and playwrights, Kjartansson grew up surrounded by the costumes, role-playing, painted sets and pathos of the stage. His own performative practice developed while attending the Iceland Academy of the Arts in Reykjavik (1999-2001), before playing in several bands as a singer and guitarist.
Major solo shows include exhibitions at the Museo Tamayo, Mexico City; Louisiana Museum, Humlebaek; the De Pont Museum, Tilburg; the Kunstmuseum Stuttgart; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Reykjavík Art Museum; the Barbican Centre, London; the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Park, Washington D.C.; the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal; the Palais de Tokyo, Paris; the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York; the Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Zurich; the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin; the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; and the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; among others. Kjartansson participated in The Encyclopedic Palace at the Venice Biennale in 2013, Manifesta 10 in St. Petersburg, Russia in 2014, and he represented Iceland at the 2009 Venice Biennale. The artist received the 2019 Ars Fennica Award and was the recipient of the 2015 Artes Mundi’s Derek Williams Trust Purchase Award and Performa’s 2011 Malcolm McLaren Award.
Photo credits:
Ragnar Kjartansson, Margrét Bjarnadóttir and Bryce Dessner’s No Tomorrow (2022). Six channel video installation with sound, duration 29 minutes and 18 seconds Commissioned by Sigurður Gísli Pálmason, based on a commission by the Iceland Dance Company. Courtesy of the artists; Luhring Augustine, New York and i8 Gallery, Reykjavik. Ragnar Kjartansson, photograph by Rafael Pinho. Ragnar Kjartansson, Weekdays in Arcadia (Auður of Búland after stepping off her ATV in Skælingar), 2025. Oil on canvas, 76 3/4 x
106 1/4 inches (195 x 270 cm) © Ragnar Kjartansson. Courtesy
the artist; Luhring Augustine, New York; and i8 Gallery,
Reykjavik. Photo: Vigfús Birgisson.
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