The first retrospective in Scandinavia of contemporary art superstar Ragnar Kjartansson. The exhibition, entitled 'Epic Waste of Love and Understanding', was named one of the must-see exhibitions of the year by The Art Newspaper and featured works in a variety of media, painting, performance, large-scale spatial works etc.
Widely recognized as one of the most exciting and significant voices of contemporary art, Icelandic Ragnar Kjartansson (b. 1976) takes a both loving and critical look at Western culture. Love, identity, melancholy, masculinity, power and powerlessness are among the artist’s central themes.
Ragnar Kjartansson often uses repetition as a method – repeating a motif, a scene or a single strophe over a prolonged period of time. The balance between existential or political seriousness and superficial cliché invests the works with a precise, quivering ambiguity.
A master of all
Ragnar Kjartansson often makes us both laugh and cry. This field of tension between tragedy and comedy has become the artist’s signature – as, for example, in the work Me and My Mother (2015) which is part of the Louisiana Collection.
Mastering a multitude of genres, media and roles, Kjartansson acts as a director and a musician, a comedian and a showman, a critic and a visual artist. In his works, he uses a multitude of references – historical, art historical, literary, political and pop cultural – that all stem from a curious engagement in our dealings with the world here and now.
Ragnar Kjartansson
An array of video art, paintings, sculptures and drawings were on display, including several of the artist’s most beloved works. Among them 'A lot of Sorrow', his 2013 collaboration with American indie rock band The National as well as the immersive nine-channel video installation 'The Visitors' (2012), featuring Kjartansson and a group of his musician friends performing at a crumbling mansion formerly owned by the Astor family in upstate New York.
The Guardian, 2019
Lesser-known pieces in the show included ‘Mercy’ (2004), a single-channel film of the artist, Elvis-like with slicked-back hair and a creamy white suit, strumming a guitar and repeating the refrain “Oh why do I keep on hurting you?”.
Experience Scared Man
In a new site-specific performance created for the exhibition Scared Man (in Danish Bangemand), one could see a tuxedo-clad man with his back to the wall, perched on a cornice. The Hollywood cliché is a familiar one. Here it stood isolated as a contemporary tableau with rich interpretative possibilities.
In the media
Ragnar Kjartansson has exhibited widely at leading art institutions around the world. The exhibition was the first major retrospective in Scandinavia and followed extensive presentations at Louisiana of other key figures in contemporary art who work in multiple media, such as Marina Abramović, Pipilotti Rist, Mika Rottenberg and Arthur Jafa.
