This summer, within the context of Tabakalera's 10th anniversary,  the International Contemporary Culture Centre is dedicating a solo exhibition to the Icelandic filmmaker and artist Hlynur Pálmason (Iceland, 1984), author of an artistic practice that transcends the boundaries between cinema and the visual arts. The exhibition will be open to the public from 27 June to 28 September. The project was developed in collaboration with the San Sebastián International Film Festival and Elías Querejeta Zine Eskola.

The exhibition, curated by Joana Hurtado Matheu, allows visitors to discover Pálmason's artistic work for the first time in Spain through three audiovisual installations, series of photographs, paintings and sculptures that engage directly with his films and construct a coherent universe around time, landscape, and the transformation of matter.

Pálmason and Tabakalera's relationship began in 2022, when the filmmaker participated in the Zabaltegi-Tabakalera section of the San Sebastián Festival with his feature film Godland, which made its international debut at Cannes. The Zabaltegi-Tabakalera panel of judges recognised Godland for its formal audacity and unique artistic vision. His short film Nest, which previously premiered at the Berlinale, was also screened in the Zabaltegi-Tabakalera section.

That first point of contact was also the starting point for this exhibition project, which now extends beyond cinema to reveal a complete artist, someone committed to visual language in all its forms.

Work that oscillates between cinema and art

Although his name is widely known in the European film d'auteur sphere thanks to feature films like Vinterbrødre (2017), A White, White Day (2019), and Godland (2022), Pálmason's artistic practice has so far been less well-known. Nevertheless, his installations and experimental videos share the same aesthetic obsessions as his films: formal rigour, patient observation of the natural environment, the weight of time, and a deep connection with the rhythms of life and death.

The works on display at Tabakalera, along with the newly created piece designed specifically for this exhibition, offer a privileged glimpse into his visual language, where the narrative dissolves into atmospheres and temporal structures that appeal to the senses.

The pieces on show

Lament for a Horse (2021–2025), one of the artist’s most radical and moving audiovisual installations, depicts the decomposition of a horse over three years, filmed with a fixed camera placed on an elevated platform. The image, almost like a painting, seeks a serene reflection on the cycle of life, physical deterioration, and the beauty that emerges from the natural process. The six simultaneous video channels allow for an immersive and contemplative experience in which stillness and ambient sound evoke recollection of the animal and time itself. The installation is completed by some of the bones of the animal that stars in the piece, a photographic series composed of large-sized images and a series of Polaroid photographs. The piece was filmed in the rural environment where Pálmason lives and his own children participated in the process.

One Winter Series (2012–present) is a project conceived as a material and temporal experiment that documents a conceptual action. During the winter months, the artist installs a set of metal plates atop fabric and exposes them to the extreme climate of the Icelandic plain. Wind, snow, ice, and the passage of time act as transforming agents and leave their mark on the surfaces.

The dual audiovisual installation, filmed between 2017 and 2025, shows the effect of those elements through fixed shots of great artistic beauty. The piece proposes a visually abstract reflection on the breakdown process, the imprint of time, and nature's ability to alter all human intervention. The work also alludes to minimal gesture as a generator of meaning.

The original metal plates are displayed in the exhibition hall alongside the fabric marked by the passage of time and rust. The video installation offers a poetic and silent look at this process. One Winter Series represents a physical and visual archive of the landscape, the weather, and the passage of time.

The audiovisual installation The Beginning and the End (2025) proposes a poetic narrative filmed with analogue and digital cameras. The result is a visual meditation on the course of life. The audiovisual installation that can be seen at Tabakalera was created especially for the exhibition.

Film series

The exhibition is accompanied by a comprehensive series of his filmography entitled Cinema & Art: Hlynur Pálmason, which invites the public to discover or rediscover Pálmason's films on the big screen.

Programme:

• 28 June, 7:00 p.m. Godland (2022)
• 5 July, 7:00 p.m. A White, White Day (2019)
• 12 July, 7:00 p.m. Winter Brothers (2017)
• 19 July, 7:00 p.m. Short film session: A Painter (2013), Seven Boats (2014, 10'), Nest (2022)

Related activities

The project is complemented by a programme designed for all audiences: guided tours of the exhibition in Basque and Spanish; art workshops for families exploring themes such as landscape, time, and natural transformation through simple materials. In addition, the Arte hezkuntza: New resources to enrich educational practice course will take place on 2 and 3 July in Tabakalera. This course, part of UEU's summer programmes, offers a meeting and learning environment for teachers and artists to collaboratively think about and design new art education resources and experiences.

Biographies

Born in Hornafjörður, Iceland, in 1984, Hlynur Pálmason is an internationally acclaimed filmmaker and visual artist. His work has been on display at prestigious festivals such as Cannes, Locarno, and the San Sebastián International Film Festival, where Godland earned him the Zabaltegi-Tabakalera award. His style, marked by formal rigour and a contemplative pace, explores the interaction between landscape, time, and matter, blurring the boundaries between cinema and the visual arts.

Joana Hurtado Matheu is a curator and contemporary art specialist. In recent years, she has curated projects by Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Albert Serra, and Broomberg & Chanarin, as well as group exhibitions like Elogio del malentendido (“In Praise of Misunderstanding”) and La disidencia nostálgica (“Nostalgic Dissidence”). She has edited art publications and written for catalogues, collective works, specialised and informative magazines, as well as for the “Cultura/s” supplement of La Vanguardia, where she was a regular contributor from 2003 to 2014. She holds an undergraduate degree in Art History from the University of Barcelona and a master's degree in Art Criticism and Communication from the University of Girona, as well as an advanced studies diploma in Cinema and Audiovisual Research from the University of Paris III – Sorbonne Nouvelle. Her curatorship of this exhibition offers a comprehensive view of Hlynur Pálmason’s creative universe.