REYKJAVIK.- After three decades, the Reykjavík Arts Festival announces its first festival dedicated to contemporary visual arts. This year it will focus on the legacy of Dieter Roth, the German-born Swiss artist who spent a large part of his life in Iceland, and who influenced both established and younger artists.

The first part of this program will be a major Dieter Roth exhibition, which will be curated by Björn Roth, the son of the artist. It will be featured at two of Iceland’s largest museums: The National Gallery of Iceland and Reykjavík Art Museum, as well as in Gallery 100°, a renowned gallery. A year after another international retrospective of the work of Dieter Roth, the exhibition will shed new light on his work and practice.

The second part of the program will be Material Time/Work Time/Life Time, curated by Jessica Morgan, curator of contemporary art at Tate Modern, London. New works commissioned specifically for this event examine further the themes and inspirations at stake in Dieter Roth’s work. The exhibition brings together 30 artists from Europe and America, including Ólafur Elíasson, Matthew Barney, Carsten Höller, Bojan Sarcevic and Gabríela Fridriksdottir, who will represent Iceland at the 2005 Venice Biennale. More than twenty venues and sites in Reykjavík, its surroundings and other major Icelandic towns, will host this festival.

The exhibitions will be on view from May 14 to August 2005. Opening weekend: May 14 and 15, 2005.

Reykjavik Art Festival will also continue its tradition of welcoming some of the best international performing artists for a three-week celebration.