REYKJAVÍK.- i8 Gallery shared the passing of Kristján Guðmundsson, who died on Friday, November 21 at his home in Reykjavík.

Guðmundsson’s lifelong practice explored the boundaries and essence of artistic mediums, as well as tested the nature and limits of our ideas about time and space. His immense contributions to the course of art history internationally are significant; within Iceland in particular, Guðmundsson’s impact on visual culture is vast.

He was a vital member of SÚM gallery, an artist-run space organised by a group of artists in Iceland influenced by Fluxus and Art Povera. SÚM broke with artistic tradition and ignited a shift in the Icelandic art world in the mid-1960s. Guðmundsson acted as the head of the gallery its first year before he moved to Amsterdam in 1970, where he lived for the next decade before returning to Iceland.

Guðmundsson is one of Iceland's best-known representatives of Conceptual Art, and he was chosen, along with his brother Sigurður Guðmundsson, Hreinn Friðfinnsson, and Þórður Ben Sveinsson to exhibit at the opening of the Pompidou Centre in Paris in 1977. He represented Iceland at the Venice Biennale in 1982, and in 1993 he received the Prince Eugen Medal from the King of Sweden, as well as the Carnegie Art Award in 2010, and an honorary recognition from the Icelandic Visual Arts Council for his contributions to Icelandic art in 2022.

i8 represented Guðmundsson since its founding in 1995 and he had seven solo exhibitions at the gallery. Guðmundsson’s first show with i8 was in February 1997, and his most recent, As Far As the Space Allows, was presented from January - March 2025.

Kristján’s influence was immeasurable, and he will be incredibly missed by all of us at i8.