Difference between revisions 821110987 and 821113384 on enwiki

{{icelandic name|Ragnar}}
[[File:Ragnar Kjartansson, in his installation at the Migros Museum, 2012 in Zürich.jpg|thumb|Ragnar Kjartansson in his installation, Migros Museum, Zürich, 2012]]
(contracted; show full)ably as a member of the Icelandic band [[Trabant (band)|Trabant]]. '''Trabant''' is an electronic-pop/rock band from [[Reykjavík]], [[Iceland]], known for its raw but powerful music and flamboyant live performances. Trabant's style of music is a blend of [[electronic music]], [[Punk rock|punk]], [[R&B]] and [[Pop music|pop]].

Kjartansson graduated from the [[Iceland Academy of the Arts]] in 2001 and also studying at the Royal Academy in Stockholm in 2000. 

==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.<ref name="NYToverandover">Randy Kennedy (June 3, 2009), [https://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/04/arts/design/04icel.html Over and Over: Art That Never Stops] ''[[New York Times]]''.</ref> That same year, in his two-day piece ''The Blossoming Trees Performance'', he assumed the role of [[En plein air|plein-air painter]] in the mode of the [[Impressionism|Impressionists]] or [[Hudson River School]] artists at Rokeby Farm, a nearly 200-year-old house in the [[Hudson Valley]].<ref name="Never Tiring of Repeating Himself">Hilarie M. Sheets (January 2, 2013), [https://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/06/arts/design/the-visitors-by-ragnar-kjartansson.html Never Tiring of Repeating Himself] ''[[New York Times]]''.</ref>

Kjartansson represented Iceland at the [[Venice Biennale]] in 2009, claimed to be the youngest artist ever to do so.<ref name=aiavenice /> 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. <ref name=NYToverandover />

In 2011, Kjartansson won the inaugural Malcolm Award at Performa 11, the visual art performance biennial.<ref>Felicia R. Lee (November 22, 2011), [http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/22/ragnar-kjartansson-wins-performa-award-for-bliss/ Ragnar Kjartansson Wins Performa Award for ‘Bliss’] ''[[New York Times]]''.</ref> 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.<ref>[[Roberta Smith]] (November 19, 2011), [http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/19/a-magical-musical-moment-extended-to-12-hours/ A Magical Musical Moment, Extended to 12 Hours] ''[[New York Times]]''.</ref>

Also in 2011, Ragnar made Song 2011 in the  [[Carnegie Museum of Art]]. 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 (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.<ref>[[Roberta Smith]] (September 18, 2014), [https://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/19/arts/design/six-hours-of-the-national-in-a-lot-of-sorrow.html A Concert Not Live, but Always Living: Six Hours of the National in ‘A Lot of Sorrow’] ''[[New York Times]]''.</ref>

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! <ref>Ken Johnson (May 21, 2015), [https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/22/arts/design/review-please-touch-the-art-and-drifting-in-daylight-outdoor-art-at-the-parks.html Review: ‘Please Touch the Art’ and ‘Drifting in Daylight,’ Outdoor Art at the Parks] ''[[New York Times]]''.</ref>

In 2016, Kjartansson filmed a series of videos supporting the [[Left-Green Movement]] during the [[Icelandic parliamentary election, 2016|Parliamentary elections]]. The ads generated controversy for their content, which included a naked woman wearing a mask. <ref name=elections>{{cite news |author=K. Jóhannsson |date=29 October 2016 |title=Left Green election ads in Iceland causing controversy (Videos) |url=http://www.icenews.is/2016/10/29/left-green-election-ads-in-iceland-causing-controversy-videos/#axzz4VZ7lWQLf |newspaper= |location=Iceland |access-date=29 October 2016}}</ref>Kjartansson draws on the entire arc of art in his performative practice. The history of film, music, theatre, visual culture and literature finds its way into his video installations, durational performances, drawing and painting. Pretending and staging become key tools in the artist’s attempts to convey sincere emotion and offering a genuine experience to the audience. Kjartansson’s playful work is full of unique moments where a conflict of the dramatic and the banal culminates in a memorable way.  

== Selected works and projects == 

=== Me and My Mother ===
“Me and My Mother” began in 2000 while Kjartansson was still a student, and it is based upon a simple premise—every five years, Kjartansson invites his mother, the well-known Icelandic actress Guðrún Ásmundsdóttir, to spit on him. Mother and son stand side-by-side in her living room facing a fixed-point camera. Periodically and repeatedly, Kjartansson’s mother turns and spits into his face with dramatic gusto.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.artnews.com/2017/09/11/hirshhorn-acquires-ragnar-kjartanssens-me-and-my-mother-work-by-shirin-neshat-deb-sokolow/|title=Hirshhorn Acquires Ragnar Kjartansson’s ‘Me and My Mother,’ Work by Shirin Neshat, Deb Sokolow|last=Freeman|first=Nate|date=2017-09-11|website=ARTnews|language=en-US|access-date=2018-01-18}}</ref> <ref>{{Cite news|url=https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/when-artist-ragnar-kjartansson-asked-his-mother-spit-him-180964861/|title=Why the Artist Ragnar Kjartansson Asked his Mother to Spit On Him|last=Catlin|first=Roger|work=Smithsonian|access-date=2018-01-18|language=en}}</ref> 

=== A Lot of Sorrow<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://alotofsorrow.com|title=A Lot of Sorrow|website=www.alotofsorrow.com|access-date=2018-01-18}}</ref> ===
[[MoMA PS1]] presented the durational performance, 'A Lot of Sorrow', by Icelandic artist Ragnar Kjartansson on the 5th of May 2013. "For the original work Kjartansson sought out US rock band, [[The National (band)|The National]], to perform their song, Sorrow, repeatedly in a six-hour live loop. By stretching a single pop song into a day-long tour de force the artist continues his explorations into the potential of repetitive performance to produce sculptural presence within sound.<blockquote>"Sorrow found me when I was young,</blockquote><blockquote>Sorrow waited, sorrow won ..."</blockquote>commences the song by The National, whose music and lyrics repeatedly conjure notions of romantic suffering and contemporary Weltschmerz—themes Kjartansson often uses in his own work employing references as wide-ranging as Ingmar Bergman, the German Romantics, and Elvis Presley. As in all of Kjartansson’s performances, the idea behind A Lot of Sorrow is devoid of irony, yet full of humor and emotion. It is another quest to find the comic in the tragic and vice" versa.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.moma.org/calendar/events/3216|title=Ragnar Kjartansson A Lot of Sorrow featuring The National {{!}} MoMA|website=The Museum of Modern Art|language=en|access-date=2018-01-18}}</ref> 

=== [[The Visitors (installation)|The Visitors]] ===
'''''The Visitors''''' is a 2012 installation and video art piece created by [[Ragnar Kjartansson (performance artist)|Ragnar Kjartansson]]. Kjartansson named the piece for ''[[The Visitors (ABBA album)|The Visitors]]'', the final album by the Swedish pop band [[ABBA]]. The piece was commissioned by the Migros Museum in Zurich, and was one of the museum's inaugural exhibits. The premiere of the piece marked Kjartansson's first solo show in Switzerland.

''The Visitors'' constitutes the performance of a song written by Ásdís Sif Gunnarsdóttir, Kjartansson's ex-wife. The piece is displayed across nine different screens, each featuring musicians or artists either by themselves or in groups in different rooms of a house, or outside, performing simultaneously but separately. One screen features Kjartansson by himself. Others featured in the piece include friends of Kjartansson, both from the artist's native [[Reykjavík]] and elsewhere, as well as residents of Rokeby Farm, where the piece was filmed.

The piece was originally shown at the Migros Museum in Switzerland, and premiered in the United States in early 2013 at the [[Luhring Augustine Gallery]]. The piece has since been displayed in several museums around the world, including [[The Broad]] in [[Los Angeles]], [[The Guggenheim]] in [[New York City]], the [[Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston|Institute of Contemporary Art]] in Boston, the [[Turner House Gallery]] in [[Penarth]], the [[Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden]] in [[Washington, D.C.]], and the [[Frist Center for the Visual Arts]] in [[Nashville, Tennessee]]. The piece will be on display at the [[San Francisco Museum of Modern Art]] until January 1, 2018.

The piece was filmed at Rokeby Farm, located in upstate New York, near [[Barrytown, New York|Barrytown]]. Rokeby is a home and estate that at one point belonged to the [[Astor family]], and later the [[Livingston family]]. The property is now inhabited by various descendants of both families, and other tenants. The property was the site of an earlier 2007 piece by Kjartansson, titled ''The Blossoming Trees Performance'', during which he recorded himself as a plein-air painter for two days. The estate has also been used by other artists, due to the unique interiors of the main house on the property.

=== The Palace of the Summerland ===
In 2014 Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary (TBA21) commissioned Kjartansson and a group of 20 talented artists, musicians, and friends to create the two-part project ‘The Palace of the Summerland’ Between the April 3 and April 27, the artist and his troupe of musicians, actors, artistic directors, costume designers, camera operators, and technical crew lived and performed continuously in the Augarten exhibition space, transforming it into an active studio, an art factory, and a set for a lmic and theatrical adaptation of the epic novel ''World Light'', by the Icelandic author and Nobel laureate [[Halldór Laxness|Halldór Laxness]]. ''The Palace of the Summerland'' is a piece of performance art, irting with literature, music, and sculpture—a manic journey into the souls of generations of Icelandic artists, presented under the guise of making a lm. Kjartansson describes the project as a “megalomaniac quest,” in this case to capture beauty, art, emotion, and the essence of life. Aiming at the impossible, it is a task that has to be tried, completed, lived. It was developed simultaneously with ''The Explosive Sonics of Divinity / Der Klang der Offenbarung des Göttlichen'', a theater piece featuring stage paintings, performed by the German Film Orchestra Babelsberg and the Film Choir Berlin and premiered at the Volksbühne in Berlin on February 19.

Laxness wrote ''World Light'' between 1937 and 1940, around the outbreak of [[World War II]]. ''The Palace of the Summerland'', named after the second part of the novel, revolves around the tragic and fateful life of its protagonist, the folk poet Ólafur Kárason, whose constant search for sheer beauty and artistic grati cation leads to his nal tragic apotheosis.

Kjartansson states: “''This story has molded my approach to art more than anything else... It colored my whole worldview...'' World Light ''is an epic about the artist. An ironic tale of beauty and artistic integrity written in the crucible of modernism, it is equally an ode to beauty and a deconstruction of it. It speaks to an important 21st-century core: the politics of beauty. The exhibition will be the process of lming scenes from this novel, which depict the utopic creative moment, the search for perfection, and the nal romanticized sacri ce for art. The exhibition space will become a [[Federico Fellini|Fellini]]-style studio, a mayhem factory for building, acting, and lming a story on beauty. We are not really making cinema; we are acting out an attempt to make cinema... It is like [[Paul Auster]]’s'' [[The Book of Illusions]]''.''”

The team assembled for this project was a robust group of some of Reykjavík’s most prominent artists, comedians, writers, and musicians. It is a gang of the friends who have inspired him in his works. Beginning in April, they left behind their regular lives and joined Kjartansson on a [[Fitzcarraldo]]-like journey. They became ''The Palace of the Summerland'' by building it, acting it, and living it. Kjartansson’s father, the theater director Kjartan Ragnarsson, was there to help direct the scenes, so there was even father-son tension. By visiting TBA21–Augarten at different times, the public experienced diverse situations: the team caught in the middle of a rehearsal; Kjartansson with his father introducing the timing of a certain scene; musicians rehearsing a score composed by [[Kjartan Sveinsson]], the composer and former member of [[Sigur Rós|Sigur Rós]]; the production of sets, costumes, and props: literally the entire production process in front of the cameras and behind the scenes. “''It will be a factory where we are building, acting, and lming an impossibly big story on beauty. The drama is on- site. We are making an epic on a softporn budget, surrounded by the audience. It is a hopeless task. A true disaster,''” said Kjartansson.

From April 3 to April 27 (Wednesday to Sunday during opening hours and Saturdays until midnight), the musicians, actors, artistic directors, costume designers, camera operators, and technical crew lived and performed continuously in the Augarten exhibition space, transforming it into an active studio, an art factory, and a set for a filmic and theatrical adaptation of the epic novel. The venue served as the setting for a durational performance and work-in- progress in which the situation, process, and drama of each ephemeral moment are even more important than a final outcome. The public was invited to pay a visit and enter the situation, momentarily immersing itself in the scene and atmosphere and experiencing the adaptation and production of a tale of beauty and artistic integrity that has molded generations of Icelandic artists, including Ragnar Kjartansson himself. Visitors were encouraged to spend time with the performance, to return and to maintain an engagement with the monthlong action. Following this four-week performance, the film/theater sets will become part of a large-scale environmental installation was on view at TBA21–Augarten between April 30 to June 8.

Laxness’s magni cently humanistic novel is, according to Kjartansson, the blueprint of Iceland’s artistic DNA and was frequently invoked by his father throughout his upbringing as one would cite “religious scriptures.” In the face of the indifference and contempt of those around him, the poet Ólafur Kárason, the protagonist of ''World Light'', is driven by his sense of destiny, living a life of poverty, loneliness, death, perversity, and failed love encounters as he journeys across Iceland in pursuit of beauty, poetry, and the divine. Kjartansson and company’s adaptation crystallizes around the highly romantic but also ambiguous moments of epiphany described by Laxness. These are experiences of great beauty, inspiration, and serenity when the world comes to rest, reality crumbles, and divine and earthly revelations appear in utmost clarity. In ''The Palace of the Summerland'', these episodes will be narrated, enacted, repeatedly rehearsed, and captured on lm in one single and unique take, which will later become the lmic scenes that are an integral part of the unique work to remain on display following the performance. Various sets, selected by Kjartansson and his collaborators, correspond to the four parts of Laxness’s novel (Book 1: ''The Revelation of the Deity''; Book 2: ''The Palace of the Summerland''; Book 3: ''The House of the Poet''; Book 4: ''The Beauty of the Heavens'').

The Team for the project included: Ragnar Kjartansson, Davíð Þór Jónsson, [[Kjartan Sveinsson]], Ingibjörg Sigurjónsdóttir, María Huld Markan Sigfúsdóttir, Kjartan Ragnarsson, Ragnar Helgi Ólafsson, Margrét Bjarnadóttir, Sólveig Katrín Ragnarsdóttir, Helga Stefánsdóttir, Sveinn Kjartansson, Lilja Gunnarsdóttir, Halldór Halldórsson, Anna Hrund Másdóttir, Tómas Örn Tómasson, Christopher W. McDonald, Hildigunnur Birgisdóttir, [[Kristín Anna Valtýsdóttir|Kristín Anna Valtýsdóttir]], Thelma Marín Jónsdóttir, Sigríður Margrét Guðmundsdóttir, Daníel Björnsson. 

=== The End<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.e-flux.com/announcements/38021/ragnar-kjartansson-at-53rd-venice-biennale/|title=Ragnar Kjartansson at 53rd Venice Biennale - Announcements - e-flux|website=www.e-flux.com|language=en|access-date=2018-01-18}}</ref> ===
In 2009 Kjartansson was selected as the official Icelandic representation at the '''53rd International Art Exhibition – [[La Biennale di Venezia]].''' 

'The End’ (2009) features a tableau vivant of the artist and his model lasting for the entire six-months of the Biennale, along with a monumental video and music installation. It is presented in the Palazzo Michiel dal Brusà, a 14th-century palazzo on the Grand Canal near the Rialto.

Having transformed the palazzo into a makeshift studio for the Biennale, over the course of the Biennale Kjartansson painted the image of a young man posing day after day against the backdrop of the Grand Canal. The man modeling for him, fellow artist Páll Haukur Björnsson, smokes cigarettes and drinks beer, while clothed only in a bathing suit. For six months, Kjartansson limited his art production to the painting of this scene, producing one work after the other, with the paintings made on previous days left to accumulate around the studio. The performance is partially based on questions of the artist’s self, suggesting his perpetual re-conceptualization in relation to his surroundings and previously existing works of art. 

In a separate room, “The End” new video installation consisting of several scenes shot in the Canadian [[Rocky Mountains]] display Kjartansson and a collaborator, musician Davíd Thór Jónsson, playing an ambiguous country music arrangement. Recorded in the snow-covered mountains, the expansive sights and sounds in the video are in sharp contrast to the intimate and isolated performance in the adjoining room of the palazzo. Taken together, the recorded performance in the Rocky Mountains and the live performance in Venice create a dramatic juxtaposition between two iconic settings, connected by themes of creativity, camaraderie, and [[Weltschmerz]] or world-weariness.

A catalogue has been published for the exhibition by Hatje Cantz Verlag and the [[Center for Icelandic Art]], containing among different essays a correspondence of letters between Kjartansson and artist Andjeas Ejiksson, chronicling preparations for the Pavilion.

The End was organized and presented on behalf of the Icelandic Ministry of Culture by the Center for Icelandic Art (CIA.IS) in Reykjavík, Iceland under the commissionership of '''Christian''' Schoen, and was curated by Markús T. Andrésson and Dorothée Kirch.

== 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}}
*[http://bombmagazine.org/article/7241/ragnar-kjartansson Interview with BOMB magazine.]

==References==
{{Reflist|2}}

{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ragnar Kjartansson}}
[[Category:Icelandic performance artists]]
[[Category:Living people]]
[[Category:People from Reykjavík]]
[[Category:Icelandic male singers]]
[[Category:1976 births]]⏎
[[Category:Contemporary art]]