Magnus Logi Kristinsson, Iceland/Finland

Born in 1975 in Reykjavík, Iceland. Lives and works in Helsinki, Finland

Magnús Logi Kristinsson is an Icelandic visual artist situated within the lineage of Icelandic conceptual art exemplified by Hreinn Friðfinnsson (1943–2024), he has developed a distinctive practice in which sculpture, performance, language and attentive observation converge. His relocation to Amsterdam in 1999 to study at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie immersed him in one of Europe’s most influential conceptual art environments, where his interest in performance emerged as an extension of sculptural thinking rather than a departure from it.

Following his studies at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie, where he graduated in 2003, Kristinsson continued his education at the Academy of Fine Arts in Helsinki, and was between 2005 and 2007 member of the interdisciplinary performance collective Oblivia, an experience that further refined his understanding of performance as a spatial and conceptual medium. Since then, his work has been presented extensively throughout Europe and the United States.

Although performance constitutes the primary form of his practice, Kristinsson works fundamentally as a sculptor. Each project begins with the careful construction of a spatial situation within which actions, objects, language and duration enter into precise relationships. His performances frequently take the form of live readings of meticulously composed lists—names, places, objects and everyday observations—that combine conceptual rigour with understated humour and poetic economy. Whether listing every song recorded by The Beatles or directing attention towards the overlooked details of daily life, these works transform familiar information into visual, spatial and temporal propositions. Rather than functioning as spoken-word performances, they unfold as carefully calibrated perceptual situations in which silence, rhythm, repetition and bodily presence are as significant as language itself.

Marked by conceptual precision, restraint and quiet wit, Kristinsson’s work demonstrates how the smallest shifts in attention can fundamentally alter our experience of the everyday. Through an economy of means and an exceptional sensitivity to the relationship between language, space and perception, he reveals the extraordinary latent within the seemingly ordinary.