Karin Sander: 1957–2057

Reykjavík Art Museum presents Karin Sander: 1957–2057, a major exhibition, opening on May 30, 2026 as part of the Reykjavík Arts Festival. The show brings together works from across Sander’s career alongside new pieces made in Iceland, offering a broad and engaging look at one of Germany’s leading conceptual artists.

Sander’s work often shifts how we see everyday things, making familiar spaces and situations feel newly charged. Rather than presenting something fixed, her artworks frequently invite visitors to become part of them. Through subtle and precise interventions, she draws attention to details we might normally overlook, encouraging us to think differently about how we experience the world. Many of her pieces depend on audience participation or are shaped by their surroundings, so the exhibition keeps evolving as people move through it.

Karin Sander (b. 1957) lives and works in Berlin and has had a strong connection to Iceland for more than 30 years. The country has been both a place where she produces work and an ongoing reference in her practice. This exhibition reflects that long relationship, including works created in different locations around Iceland that respond directly to its landscapes, environments, and cultural context.

A key aspect of the exhibition Karin Sander: 1957–2057 is site-specificity—how artworks connect to the space they inhabit, physically and conceptually. At Reykjavík Art Museum, the exhibition activates the building itself, with works that respond to its architecture and its place within the city. A neon piece uses Google Earth coordinates to locate visitors within the museum, while others highlight surfaces, structures, and even the passage of time within the space.

Participation plays an important role throughout the exhibition. In Visitors 1:8, one of Sander’s most ambitious ongoing projects, guests are invited to be scanned and turned into small-scale 3D sculptures. As the exhibition progresses, these sculptures gather into a growing installation, making the audience visible in the space and turning their presence into part of the artwork.

 The exhibition also introduces new works from Sander’s “Patina Paintings” series. For this show, white primed canvases were installed across Iceland, including for example in Arnarfjörður, Kerlingarfjöll, Hallormsstaður, Akureyri and near the Reykjavík Art Museum, resulting in works that reflect the country’s varied landscapes and changing conditions.

Across her career, Sander has explored how time, environment, and context shape both objects and people. Her work challenges traditional ideas about authorship and permanence, focusing on process, change, and interaction. By using everyday materials, architectural features, and digital tools, she creates situations where art emerges through experience rather than being imposed.

Sander studied in Stuttgart and New York and has had a Professorship at Kunsthochschule Berlin Weißensee and ETH Zurich. She represented Switzerland at the 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale together with the historian of art and architecture Philip Ursprung. Her work has earned several international awards, including a studio-fellowship at the Whitney Museum in New York, the Rome Prize Villa Massimo, and the Villa Romana Prize, Florence. Her artworks are held in major collections worldwide, including Reykjavík Art Museum and the National Gallery of Iceland, and have been shown at institutions such as Kunst Museum Winterthur, The Museum of Modern Art, New York and SFMOMA, San Francisco. She has also created a number of public artworks, especially in Germany and Switzerland.

Karin Sander: 1957–2057 highlights the artists distinctive approach to material, space, time, and lived experience, encouraging visitors to reflect upon their role within the exhibition—and the wider environment.