3 May – 16 August 2026

This year’s art exhibition of the Ruhrfestspiele presents the Icelandic artist Ragnar Kjartansson. Born in 1976, Kjartansson is among the most influential contemporary artists from the Nordic region. He is internationally renowned for his humorous yet melancholic works, which address major themes such as time, emotions, and failure in a distinctive and entertaining way.

In the early 2000s, Kjartansson first gained recognition as a musician, particularly as the frontman of the band Trabant. This musical background continues to shape his artistic practice to this day. In his works, he approaches themes such as love, melancholy, identity, as well as power and powerlessness with self-irony, while simultaneously deconstructing cultural and masculine role models. He consciously draws on art-historical traditions, especially 19th-century landscape painting and feminist performance art from the second half of the 20th century.

The exhibition includes video installations as well as new paintings, offering a focused overview of Kjartansson’s oeuvre. It is characterized by three central, closely interrelated thematic fields: music, feminism, and art history.

Kjartansson’s exhibition in Recklinghausen marks the first institutional collaboration between the Kunsthalle, the Ruhrfestspiele, and Kumu Tallinn, one of the most important art museums in Northern Europe. Kjartansson gained international prominence no later than 2009 at the Venice Biennale. His works have been shown at major institutions such as MoMA and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, the Barbican Centre in London, and the Louisiana Museum near Copenhagen. 

Opening: 2 May, 5 pm

Finissage-Weekend: 15-16 August

Public Guided Tours: every Sunday at noon

A ticket to the Ruhrfestspiele on the same day entitles the holder to visit the exhibition free of charge.