Billboard Commercial Break

Billboard presents an open call for artists to create an artwork in public space in collaboration with Y gallery and Reykjavík Art Museum. During the period 1.-3.January 2027 there will be a Commercial Break on Billboards 550 screens across the city of Reykjavík. During this time an artist will present an exhibition of a new work commisioned for the project.

The artist will receive ISK 1.000.000 for the work which will then be donated to the collection of the Reykjavík Art Museum.

The work will be exhibited on over 550 screens across the city, both in bus stops and large screens (6 x 4m) by roads and intersections. It is not possible to exhibit moving images but still images can be exchanged every 8 sec.

Applicants are asked to submit applications before 16:00 on the 30th of September 2026. The application should include a text on the proposed work along with 1-5 images of the work (diagrams, sketches, photos etc.) combined in a pdf document. The final presentation of the work will be in collaboration with Y gallery.

A selection committee has been appointed to review the applictions with representatives from Y gallery, Reykjavík Art Museum, Billboard and The Association of Icelandic Artists. The committees selection will be made public shortly after the application deadline.

Hrafnkell Sigurðsson was awarded Artist of the Year for his work Resolution for the Billboard Commercial Break in 2022.

Auglýsingahlé 2025

Major Public Art Project
Roni Horn

Roni Horn was born in New York in 1955, where she lives and works. Over the past five decades, Horn has spent considerable periods of time in Iceland, which has had a profound influence on both her life and artistic practice. Her work is held in the collections of many of the world’s most prestigious museums, and major retrospective exhibitions have been presented at the Whitney Museum of American Art, Tate Modern in London, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark, and Reykjavík Art Museum.
Auglýsingahlé 2024

Ummyndanir
Haraldur Jónsson
“The work revolves around transformations of familiar phenomena drawn from the zeitgeist, drifting restlessly through the air at the turn of the year, when the world is temporarily open at both ends. It is a shadow-image woven from fragmentary messages, coordinates, flashes of insight, and unexpected propositions emerging from the subconscious,” Haraldur says of the work.
Auglýsingahlé 2023

Rétthermi
Sigurður Ámundason
"Post-structuralism, ambiguity, and doubt form the foundations of the works. Meaningless trademarks that signify nothing yet carry an inflated sense of their own importance, bearing numbers and Icelandic letters in arbitrary sequences. Signs that signify signs, turning in on themselves; directions that, in fact, lead nowhere." Sigurður says of the work.
Auglýsingahlé 2022

Upplausn
Hrafnkell Sigurðsson
“The work is abstract; there is no immediately visible connection to its surroundings—it moves beyond context altogether. It is detached from the world as we know it.”

Hrafnkell describes this as entering into the void, working with pixels, photography, and outer space, and creating images at the point where technology reaches its limit: “You cannot go any further out into space. The images are of the Milky Way; I enter into that image and move beyond it, and then go further still.”

Hrafnkell describes this as a form of digital connection to nature. He sees the digital screen as the complete opposite of nature, yet here he has brought nature and the screen into relation with one another.