Ragnar Kjartansson, The End – Venice, June 2009, Performance shot, Commissioned by the Center for Icelandic Art. Image by Dave Yoder for The New York Times/Redux, courtesy of the artist, Luhring Augustine, New York and i8 Galleri, Reykjavik.
Currently on view at Luhring Augustine through August 13, 2010 is the gallery’s first solo show of Icelandic-born artist Ragnar Kjartansson. The exhibition offers a video and a room full to the brim with canvases Kjartansson painted during the Venice Biennale 2009. Born in 1976, the artist is the youngest to ever show at the Biennale. Multidisciplinary in his approach, Kjartansson creates with drawing, painting, sculpture, video, and theater. His work taps into not only his own cultural history and the Nordic notions of tragedy, but also the nostalgic history of bygone eras of theater, television, music, and art.
Installation shot. Image by Art Observed.
More text and images after the jump…
Installation shot. Image by Art Observed.
The model is fellow artist and Icelander Páll Haukur Björsson. Clothed only in a Speedo and the occasional robe, he plays the role of the nude model or muse to the tortured artist. In this way, writes curator/writer Lilly Wei, the men enter into the “egalitarian dynamic of artist confronting artist, one dressed, and one barely clothed, with male gaze meeting male gaze.” The backdrop, the ground floor of a 14th-century palazzo, is transformed into the artist’s studio. Kjartansson is interested in the visitor’s relationship to the space, encouraging participation: perhaps through putting a record on the record player, picking up the guitar and strumming, perhaps painting a few brushstrokes themselves. The canvases, painted at a rate of one a day, pile up over the six months, all a monument to artistic ruin.
Being the first to represent his country after their brutal economic collapse in 2008, Kjartansson wanted to create a “project rigorously stripped of the extraneous and the expensive: just himself, some cheap art materials, and a subject,” states the New York Times. “The only luxury would be time, which in this case might be viewed instead as penance… ‘I thought of him as this man without fate — which is all what we’re living back home, in a way.’”
Still from Ragnar Kjartansson, The Man, 2010, Video, 49 minutes. Image courtesy of the artist, Luhring Augustine, New York and i8 Galleri, Reykjavik.
The two-fold exhibition also includes a video installation, with videos from the Canadian Rocky Mountains. In collaboration with musician David Thor Jonsson, these five projections show Kjartansson and Jonsson playing various musical instruments immersed in an idyllic wintertime landscape. This raw scene represents human aspiration and creativity, while Venice remains the legendary symbol of defiant unreality.
As writer Jeff Byles puts it, “this young Icelandic artist has made a career of turning the deepest Icelandic traditions into works of performance that are part myth, part put-on, and part spontaneous adventure. Tapping into a rich storytelling lineage and dramatic sense of place, the artist has captured the creative resilience of this complex island nation.”
Marcus Thor Andresson, one of the curators of the Icelandic Pavilion, commented on the paintings, “‘It’s kind of sad because he sincerely wants them to be good paintings. But even if they’re done well, Ragnar always has to face the fact that they won’t be seen as paintings. They’re only ever going to be seen as artifacts from this performance.’”
In a nod to his heroes, performance artists Marina Abramovic and Daniel Buren, his performances stretch over days, weeks, or, in this case, months, and push his work into a condensed trial of endurance that separates it from the merely theatrical. In an interview with Katharina Klara Jung, the artist declares, “I am very inspired by the 70s endurance performances. I like endurance, the sport element of art. I am also raised in the theatre where they do the same thing for months. I always fancied when actors were practicing their scenes over and over, giving it the same emotions but always slightly better or slightly worse, never the same.”
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Installation shot. Image by Art Observed.
Kjartansson, who is a graduate of the Icelandic Academy of the Arts in Reykjavik, Iceland and the Royal Academy in Stockholm, Sweden, has has been the subject of numerous solo and group exhibitions at galleries, museums, and biennials and triennials. His work was recently featured at the Walter Phillips Gallery, Banff, Canada, The Sundance Film Festival New Frontier, Park City, Utah, and Hafnarborg, The Hafnarfjordur Centre of Culture and Fine Art, Hafnarfjörður, Iceland. Kjartansson has also participated in the 2nd Turin Triennial, Turin, Italy, Manifesta 8, Rovereto, Italy, the Reykjavik Arts Festival, Reykjavik, Iceland (2008, 2005, 2004), Repeat Performances: Roni Horn and Ragnar Kjartansson, Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, and God, The Living Art Museum, Reykjavík, Iceland, among others. Recent critical essays and articles discussing his work have appeared in publications including Artforum, Art In America, ArtReview, Frieze, Modern Painters, and The New York Times.
The gallery is located at 531 West 24th St.
Ragnar Kjartansson, The End – Venice, November 2009, Performance shot, Commissioned by the Center for Icelandic Art. Image by Dave Yoder for The New York Times/Redux, courtesy of the artist, Luhring Augustine, New York and i8 Galleri, Reykjavik.
Ragnar Kjartansson, The End – Venice, September 2009, Performance shot, Commissioned by the Center for Icelandic Art. Image by Dave Yoder for The New York Times/Redux, courtesy of the artist, Luhring Augustine, New York and i8 Galleri, Reykjavik.
Ragnar Kjartansson, The End – Venice, November 2009, Performance shot, Commissioned by the Center for Icelandic Art. Image by Dave Yoder for The New York Times/Redux, courtesy of the artist, Luhring Augustine, New York and i8 Galleri, Reykjavik.
Ragnar Kjartansson, The End – Venice, June 2009, Performance shot, Commissioned by the Center for Icelandic Art. Image by Dave Yoder for The New York Times/Redux, courtesy of the artist, Luhring Augustine, New York and i8 Galleri, Reykjavik.
– J. Lindblad
Related Links:
Exhibition Site [Luhring Augustine]
Over and Over – Art That Never Stops [NY Times]
Venice Preview: Ragnar Kjartansson [Art in America]
What Do You Do With A Drunken Painter? [Art Info]
At Its 25th Anniversary Party, Luhring Augustine Rejoices [Art Info]
Ragnar Kjartansson: Venice is a Lighthouse at the End of the World [Art Info]
Ragnar Kjartansson [Frieze]
Video: The End, by Ragnar Kjartansson [New Art TV]
Somewhat Unreal: An Interview with Ragnar Kjartansson [NY Arts Magazine]
Performance Art Live: The End: Ragnar Kjartansson [InterArtIve]
