Ragnar Kjartansson (performance artist)
Ragnar Kjartansson (RAG-ner kuh-YART-un-sun) was born 1976 in Reykjavík)[1] and is an Icelandic performance artist.[2]
Early life
Kjartansson [3] was born in 1976 in Reykjavík, where he still lives today.[4] His mother, Guðrún Ásmundsdóttir, is a well-known actress in Iceland and used to perform with his father, Kjartan Ragnarsson, now a director and playwright.[5] Through both of his parents professions, Ragnar was exposed to the theater from an incredibly young age. He was in and out of bands growing up, most notably as former member of the Icelandic band Trabant. He soon transferred mediums to visual art as he felt "like a poser" playing music. He began with visual art, and attended the Royal Academy, Stockholm, Sweden in 2000. He also attended the Icelandic Academy of the Arts, painting department. Here he took a course in Feminist Art - and learned about the works of Marina Ambromovic and Vito Acconci and Chris Burden. This is where he found interest in blending the fake, repetitively rehearsed world of theatrics with which he was raised, and the newly found world of performance art. Since then his career has been characterized by experiments with visual art, music and theater. He works simultaneously as an artist and a musician and considers himself mainly as a performance artist. Ragnar still currently lives and works in Reykjavik. His pieces are characterized by the play between contradicting feelings; sorrow and happiness, horror and beauty, drama and humor… [6]
Work
Ragnar's work is recognized for its playful darkness, its brilliant fusion of humor and sorrow. He uses humor as a tool to disarm the audience, and allow them to approach more serious topics of discussion. Repetition is a reoccurring trait in his works, stemming from both a background in theater and in religion. The theater, repetition for rehearsal.. and religion as a repetition to bring one closer to a greater path. This is embodied through any duration pieces, repeating process across many hours, days, months, even years.
In a work entitled, "Me and My Mother" Ragnar has his mom stand in front of a recording camera and spit on him. These videos have been made every five years since his graduation in 2000.
In a 2002 work called Death and the Children, he dressed up in a dark suit and carrying a paper scythe, leading young children through a cemetery, trying earnestly to answer their questions about fate.
In his 2006 live performance Sorrow Conquers Happiness, captured in the video God, he wore a tuxedo and played the role of an 1940s nightclub crooner on a pink-draped stage with an orchestra, singing, “Sorrow conquers happiness” over and over as the music swelled.[3] That same year, in his two-day piece The Blossoming Trees Performance, he assumed the role of plein-air painter in the mode of the Impressionists or Hudson River School artists at Rokeby Farm, a nearly 200-year-old house in the Hudson Valley.[5]
Kjartansson represented Iceland at the Venice Biennale in 2009, claimed to be the youngest artist ever to do so.[1] For his exhibition at Palazzo Michiel dal Brusa near the Rialto Bridge, the artist relentlessly painted the portrait of fellow Icelandic artist Páll Haukur Björnsson who poses before him in a black Speedo, cigarette and beer in hand. Ragnar made a painting a day for six months, totaling in 144 paintings produced of the same model. These paintings were then displayed covering the walls in very close proximity. [3]
In 2011, Kjartansson won the inaugural Malcolm Award at Performa 11, the visual art performance biennial.[7] He won for his 12-hour work Bliss, which was performed without a break at the Abrons Arts Center involving repeated performances of the denouement of Mozart’s “Marriage of Figaro”, the moment when the count gets down on one knee and asks his wife for forgiveness, which she grants in an aria. Kristjan Johannson, an Icelandic tenor, played the count, with members of his master class in the other roles.[8]
Also in 2011, Ragnar made Song 2011 in the Carnige Museum. This work involved his three beautiful nieces, sitting in the center of the museum surrounded by neoclassical sculptures, singing the same elegant refrain for six hours. "The weight of the world is love." The melancholy misremembered lyrics of an Allen Ginsberg poem and its romantic deceleration that accumulates to the cathartic force of a prayer through repetition, the neoclassical plaster casts of ancient sculptures looking down at the scenery as if watching an other worldly spectacle, and the three nieces passively embodying both classical and contemporary ideals of beauty in a trance.
Ragnar's six-hour video A Lot of Sorrow shows the indie rock band The National onstage before a live audience in the VW Dome at MoMA PS1 in May 2013; in front of up to six cameras that constantly provide different views, the band plays its popular lament, Sorrow, roughly 3:30 minutes, repeated for six hours. The lyrics change, the melody changes, the energy changes.[9]
For a 2015 Creative Time in New York's Central Park, Kjartansson created S.S. Hangover: in a square-sailed boat resembling a Viking ship, a formally attired brass sextet plays a beautiful composition as the vessel slowly motors around Duck Island in the Harlem Meer. The composition was originally created based on the acoustics of the space; it was highly considered how the sound would resonate and be absorbed and at what points you could hear it the best. The sound was literally made for the space! [10]
Exhibitions
Solo Exhibitions Include -
2016-2017 Ragnar Kjartansson, Barbican Art Gallery, London, England; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C., USA
2016 Ragnar Kjartansson, Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal, Montréal, Canada Ragnar Kjartansson and the National: A Lot of Sorrow, Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL Ragnar Kjartansson: The Visitors, University of Buffalo Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY, USA Ragnar Kjartansson: Woman in E, Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, Detroit, MI, USA
2015-2016 Ragnar Kjartansson: Seul celui qui connaît le désir, Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France
2015 A Lot of Sorrow, Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, OH, USA Ragnar Kjartansson: A Lot of Sorrow, König Galerie, Berlin, Germany Ragnar Kjartansson: Song, Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH, USA Ragnar Kjartansson: The End, Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, Detroit, MI, USA Ragnar Kjartansson: The Visitors, Feana Art Center, Buenos Aires, Argentina Ragnar Kjartansson: The Visitors, Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland, Cleveland, OH, USA Ragnar Kjartansson: The Visitors, Sala Cathedral, Faena Arts Center, Buenos Aires, Brazil, Ragnar Kjartansson: The Visitors, The Vinyl Factory, London, England Ragnar Kjartansson: The Visitors + The Man, The John Curtin Gallery, Perth, Australia
2014–2015 Black Box: Ragnar Kjartansson, Hirshhorn Museum, Washington D. C., USA
2014 The End – Rocky Mountains, Winnipeg Art Gallery, Manitoba, Canada The Palace of the Summerland, Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary, Vienna, Austria Ragnar Kjartansson and The National: A Lot of Sorrow, Luhring Augustine Bushwick, New York, NY, USA Ragnar Kjartansson: Me, My Mother, My Father and I, New Museum, New York, NY, USA Ragnar Kjartansson: The Visitors, Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston, Boston, MA, USA Ragnar Kjartansson: The Visitors, Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Bilbao, Spain
2013–2014 Ragnar Kjartansson: The Visitors, Kling & Bang Gallerí, Reykjavík, Iceland 2013 Ragnar Kjartansson, Gund Gallery, Kenyon College, Gambier, OH, USA Ragnar Kjartansson: The Visitors, HangarBicocca, Milan, Italy Ragnar Kjartansson: The Visitors, Luhring Augustine, New York, NY, USA Ragnar Kjartansson: The Visitors, Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary, Vienna, Austria Scandinavian Pain: Ragnar Kjartansson, Edvard Munch, Malmö Nordic 2013 Festival, Malmö, Sweden
2012 Benefit, Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Zurich, Switzerland The End—Ragnar Kjartansson, Scrap Metal Gallery, Toronto, Canada Ragnar Kjartansson: The End-Venezia, Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin, Italy The Visitors, Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Zurich, Switzerland
2011–2012 Ragnar Kjartansson: Song, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA, USA; Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami, Miami, FL, USA; Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston, Boston, MA, USA 2011 Ragnar Kjartansson, i8 Gallery, Reykjavík, Iceland Ragnar Kjartansson: Endless Longing, Eternal Return, Frankfurter Kunstverein, Frankfurt, Germany Ragnar Kjartansson: The Man, Arthouse at the Jones Center, Austin, TX, USA Take Me Here by the Dishwasher (music by Kjartan Sveinsson), BAWAG P.S.K. Contemporary, Vienna, Austria 2010 The End—Ragnar Kjartansson, Hafnarborg—Hafnarfjörður Centre of Culture and Fine Art, Hafnarfjörður, Iceland Ragnar Kjartansson, Luhring Augustine, New York, NY, USA Ragnar Kjartansson: Me and My Mother, EX3 Contemporary Art Center, Florence, Italy Ragnar Kjartansson: The End, Walter Phillips Gallery, The Banff Centre, Banff, Canada Studio: The Night—Eroticism, Folköl, Melancholia, Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden
2009 Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy (representing Iceland)
2008 2nd Turin Triennal, Turin, Italy Manifesta 8, Rovereto, Italy
2007 Folksong, 508 West 25th Street, New York, NY, USA God, Living Art Museum, Reykjavík, Iceland Guilt Trip, i8 Gallery, Reykjavík, Iceland Hot Shame—The Quest for Shelley’s Heart, Galleria Riccardo Crespi, Milan, Italy
2006 Sorrow Conquers Happiness, Galerie Adler, Frankfurt, Germany
2005 The Great Unrest, Dagsbrún, Reykjavík Art Festival, Eyjafjoll, Iceland
2004 Monument of Love, Gallery GUK +, Selfoss, Iceland; Lejre, Denmark; Bremen, Germany Oh My God, Safn, Reykjavík, Iceland
2003 Colonialization, Kling & Bang Gallerí, Reykjavík, Iceland
2001 Hurt the One You Love, i8 Gallery, Reykjavík, Iceland
2000 Konstar och jag vil knulla, Gallerí 1319 A, Stockholm, Sweden
HAPPENINGS AND PERFORMANCES
2016 Der Klang der Offenbarung des Göttlichen / The Explosive Sonics of Divinity (music by Kjartan Sveinsson), Théâtre Maisonneuve Montreal, Canada Krieg (music by Kjartan Sveinsson),, Volksbühne am Rosa Luxemburg Platz, Berlin, Germany
2015 The Fall, Haus der Berliner Festspiel, Berlin, Germany FOREVER LOVE, Eaux Claires Festival, Eaux Claires, WI, USA Ragnar Kjartansson and the All-Star Band, Culturescapes Iceland, Zurich, Switzerland
2014 Bjarni Bömmer hlustar á Take it Easy með Eagles (Bjarni Bömmer listens to Take It Easy by the Eagles), Skúrinn, Reykavík, Iceland Der Klang der Offenbarung des Göttlichen / The Explosive Sonics of Divinity (music by Kjartan Sveinsson), Volksbühne Berlin, Berlin, Germany; Reykjavík City Theatre, Reykjavík, Iceland Sorrow Conquers Happiness, Manifesta10, Vitabsk Station, St. Petersburg, Russia
2013 Civilization: Monumental Materialism, MoMA PS1, Long Island City, NY, USA A Lot of Sorrow, Ragnar Kjartansson and The National, MoMA PS1, Long Island City, NY, USA Ragnar Kjartansson: Variation on Meat Joy (online performance), BMW Tate Live, Tate Modern, Performance Room, London, England Self-portraits from Room 413, Sequences: Real Time Art Festival, Reykjavik, Iceland S.S. Hangover, Venice Biennale, Il Palazzo Enciclopedico (The Encyclopedia Palace), Arsenale di Venezia, Venice, Italy
2012 Bliss, National Theatre of Iceland, Reykjavik, Iceland
2011 Bliss, Performa 2011, New York, NY, USA
2010 The February Radio Drama: The Constant Reality Theater, Watermill Center, Watermill, NY, USA
2009 Number Three: Here and Now. Düsseldorf (in association with exhibition 100 Years (Version #1, Duesseldorf)), Julia Stoschek Collection, Dusseldorf, Germany SYMPHONY N.1 with Alterazioni Video, Performa 2009, New York, NY, USA
2004 The Theater of Artists, Kling & Bang Gallerí, Reykjavík, Iceland
2003 Four Variations on Sorrow (with Egill S.), Listasafn Reykjavíkur, Reykjavík, Iceland Operatione Pathetica (with Gabriella Fridriksdóttir), Circuit Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain
2002 And Björk of Course (music supervisor and artistic advisor for play by Thorvaldur Thorsteinsson), Reykjavík City Theater, Reykjavík, Iceland The Artist on the Corner (performance), Reykjavík Art Festival, Reykjavík, Iceland Modern Music (CD project with Gabrialla Frieriksdóttir), Living Art Museum, Reykjavík, Iceland Santa Claus (with Asmundur Asmundsson), Living Art Museum, Reykjavík, Iceland
1999–2002 Troubadour Rassi Prump (concerts), Reykjavík, Ísafjöreur, Búeir, and Seydisfjördur, Iceland
SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2016 Lines of Flight: Life Serial, Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Art Gallery, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA The Rhetoric of Time, Revisited, Trade Fair Palace, National Gallery in Prague, Prague, Czech Republic Spring Performance Festival, Kunstverein and Galerie Juliette Jongma, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
2015-2017 Sound in Motion, Kunstmuseum Stuttgart, Stuttgart, Germany
2015-2016 The Bauhaus #itsalldesign, Vitra Design Museum, Weil am Rhein, Germany; Kunst- und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Bonn, Germany Festival d’Automne à Paris, Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France Inaugural installation, The Broad, Los Angeles, CA, USA
2015 Drifting in Daylight: Art in Central Park, Creative Time and Central Park Conservancy, Central Park, New York, NY, USA Falling Fictions, me Collectors Room, Berlin, Germany Fireflies in the Night, Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center, Athens, Greece Framing Desire: Photography and Video, The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Fort Worth, Texas, USA An Imprecise Science, Artspace, Woolloomooloo, Australia MusicNOW Festival, Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, OH, USA Parasophia, Kyoto International Festival of Contemporary Culture, Kyoto, Japan Piano Pieces – Pianos, Sounds, Concepts, Neue Residenz, Salzburg Museum, Salzburg, Austria Sounds from a Safe Harbour Festival of Music, Art and Conversation, Crawford Art Gallery, Cork, Ireland
2014–2015 Artes Mundi 6, Ffotogallery, Cardiff, Wales
2014 High Performance: Time-Based Media Art since 1996 from the Julia Stoschek Collection, Rīgas Mākslas Telpa, Riga, Latvia Imaginary Portraits: Prince Igor, Arnold and Marie Schwartz Gallery Met, Lincoln Center, New York, NY, USA Manifesta10, Vitebsk Station, St. Petersburg, Russia All Together Now, Soctiabank Nuit Blanche, Hart House, Toronto, Canada Stanze/Rooms—Works from the Sandretto Re Rebaudengo Collection, Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin, Italy Véritables préludes flasques (pour un chien) 1/4 : Bruit rose / Truly Flabby Preludes (For a Dog) 1/4: Pink Noise, La Maison Populaire, Montreuil, France
2013 Deep Feelings: From Antiquity to Now, Kunsthalle Krems, Krems an der Donau, Austria Il Palazzo Enciclopedico (The Encyclopedic Palace), Venice Biennale, Arsenale di Venezia, Venice, Italy
2012–2013 À ciel ouvert: Le nouveau pleinairisme, Musée National des Beaux-Arts du Québec, Quebec City, Canada; Walter Phillips Gallery, The Banff Centre, Banff, Canada 2012 Discussing Metamodernism, Galerie Tanja Wagner, Berlin, Germany It’s Not the End of the World, Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin, Italy True Stories, Locks Gallery, Philadelphia, PA, USA
2011 The Garden of Forking Paths, Migros Museum, Zurich, Switzerland Prospect.2, New Orleans, LA, USA A Strange Affinity to the Beautiful and the Dreadful, Hendershot Gallery, New York, NY, USA
2010 Figura cuncta videntis (The All-Seeing Eye) / Homage to Christoph Schlingenseif, Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary, Vienna, Austria New Frontier at Sundance 2010, Park City, UT, USA Scene Shifts, Bonniers Konsthall, Stockholm, Sweden Twenty Five, Luhring Augustine, New York, NY, USA
2010–2009 The Reach of Realism, Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami, Miami, FL, USA
2008 Dreams of the Sublime and Nowhere in Contemporary Icelandic Art, Artfestival at Bozar, Brussels, Belgium; Reykjavík Art Festival, Listasafn Reykjavíkur, Reykjavík, Iceland It’s Not Your Fault, Art from Iceland, Luhring Augustine Gallery, New York, NY, USA Pleinairism, i8 Gallery, Reykjavík, Iceland
2007 Detour, ADC Gallery, New York, NY, USA
Repeat Performances: Roni Horn and Ragnar Kjartansson, Hessel Museum of Art, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY, USA
2006 Momentum: Nordic Biennial for Contemporary Art, Moss, Norway Pakkhús Postulanna, Listasafn Reykjavíkur, Reykjavík, Iceland
2005 Tívolí, Listasafn Árnesinga, Hveragerði, Iceland
2004 Aldrei, Niem Never, Gallery+, Akureyri, Iceland Berlin North (with the Icelandic Love Corporation), Hamburger Bahnhof—Museum für Gegenwart—Berlin, Berlin, Germany Intimacy (with Magnús Sigurdarson), Reykjavík Art Festival, Listasafn ASÍ, Reykjavík, Iceland Etoiles Polares Finland, Feestlokaal van Vooruit, Ghent, Belgium Momentum 2004, Moss, Norway Where Do We Go from Here? Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York, NY, USA Winter Mass, Norræna Húsið, Reykjavík, Iceland
2003 Behind the Eyes, Bergen Kunsthall, Bergen, Norway Iceland in Denmark, Stalke Galleri, Kirke Saaby, Denmark
2002 Grassroot, Living Art Museum, Reykjavík, Iceland The Tiger and the Polar Bear, Galleri 21, Malmö, Sweden The Times Are Changing, Studio Alaska, Reykjavík, Iceland
2001 Polifóní, Living Art Museum, Reykjavík, Iceland 2000 Náttúrubörn, Gallerí Nema Hvað, Reykjavík, Iceland
Literature
- Ragnar Kjartansson: The End, Christian Schoen (ed.), Ostfildern (Hatje Cantz) 2009, ISBN 978-3-7757-2333-6
- Icelandic Art Today, (Ed. by Christian Schoen and Halldór Björn Runólfsson), Hatje-Cantz, Ostfildern 2009 ISBN 978-3-7757-2295-7
- Interview with BOMB magazine.
http://bombmagazine.org/article/7241/ragnar-kjartansson
References
- 1 2 "Venice Preview: Ragnar Kjartansson". Art in America. 2 June 2009. Retrieved 27 January 2015.
- ↑ Ragnar Kjartansson - 'The Visitors' - NYTimes.com 21 Feb 2013 "Bonhomie and nihilism go hand in hand in “The Visitors,” a recent video installation by the talented performance artist Ragnar Kjartansson."
- 1 2 3 Randy Kennedy (June 3, 2009), Over and Over: Art That Never Stops New York Times.
- ↑ Ragnar Kjartansson Luhring Augustine Gallery, New York.
- 1 2 Hilarie M. Sheets (January 2, 2013), Never Tiring of Repeating Himself New York Times.
- ↑ "Off the Wall: 2011 - An Evening with Ragnar Kjartansson and Friends". Warhol. Retrieved 11 January 2011.
- ↑ Felicia R. Lee (November 22, 2011), Ragnar Kjartansson Wins Performa Award for ‘Bliss’ New York Times.
- ↑ Roberta Smith (November 19, 2011), A Magical Musical Moment, Extended to 12 Hours New York Times.
- ↑ Roberta Smith (September 18, 2014), A Concert Not Live, but Always Living: Six Hours of the National in ‘A Lot of Sorrow’ New York Times.
- ↑ Ken Johnson (May 21, 2015), Review: ‘Please Touch the Art’ and ‘Drifting in Daylight,’ Outdoor Art at the Parks New York Times.