Cookie Consent by Free Privacy Policy website At Barbican Art Gallery the first ever UK survey of the work of the internationally acclaimed Icelandic artist Ragnar Kjartansson
luglio 13, 2016 - Barbican centre

At Barbican Art Gallery the first ever UK survey of the work of the internationally acclaimed Icelandic artist Ragnar Kjartansson

Comunicato Stampa disponibile solo in lingua originale. 

Opening 14 July 2016 at Barbican Art Gallery, this is the first ever UK survey of the work of the internationally acclaimed Icelandic artist #ragnarkjartansson, charting his wide-ranging practice across film and performance, and his less well known work as a painter and draughtsman. Born into a family active in Iceland’s theatre scene, Kjartansson draws from a varied history of stage traditions, film, music and literature from Icelandic storytelling to opera music to contemporary pop culture. His performances, video installations, drawings and paintings explore the boundary between fact and fiction, as well as constructs of myth and identity. Donning various guises from a foot soldier, to a Hollywood crooner, to the incarnation of death, Kjartansson both celebrates and derides the romanticised figure of the artist as cultural hero. 

Ragnar Kjartansson said: “I am extremely pleased to have my works in the legendary Barbican. The interdisciplinary buffet that the Barbican is fits my unfocused practice. Seriously I love the building the utopian feel and the programme that has kept me coming and coming as a tourist since my parents took me there in the 80´s.” 

Jane Alison, Head of Visual Arts said “It is a pleasure to welcome and present Ragnar’s work at the Barbican, an artist who, incredibly, has never had a sizeable show in #london or a survey on this scale this side of the Atlantic. After two highly memorable presentations at the Venice Biennale, and a host of new commissions across Europe and the United States, Ragnar is an artist at the forefront of #contemporaryart and I’m thrilled this show will bring his eclectic practice to a wider audience.’ 

Music, repetition and endurance are key ingredients in Kjartansson’s video and performance works and the exhibition centres around two major works combining these elements. Shown to much acclaim at the New Museum in New York, Kjartansson’s autobiographical performance, Take me here by the Dishwasher: Memorial for a Marriage (2014) is presented. Full of romance and humour, 10 male troubadours are spread throughout the lower gallery, singing and strumming their guitars against a projected soft focus love scene acted by Kjartansson’s parents. The actors met on set and family legend has it that Kjartansson was conceived at the time the film was shot in 1975 . In homage to the interweaving of the real and the fictional, Kjartansson invited Kjartan Sveinsson, former member of the Icelandic rock band Sigur Rós to transform the dialogue into a polyphonic score. 

Kjartansson’s celebrated video installation, The Visitors (2012) is also on show in the lower gallery, comprising of a series of nine life-size video tableaux of a musical performance staged at historic Rokeby Farm in Upstate New York where Kjartansson has been a frequent visitor since 2007. Shot in one take, each musician was recorded in a separate room of the home or on the grounds of Rokeby, singing the same refrain ‘once again I fall into my feminine ways’ for just over an hour. The s ynchronisation of the screens in the exhibition space merges the individual interpretations into a cinematic and harmonic composition. 

One of the earliest works on show, Me and My Mother , is an ongoing video collaboration with his mother dating from 2000, and features four video screens, filmed over five years apart where she repeatedly spits in his face over several minutes with intensity and vigour at once provocative, humorous and absurd. As well as exploring family relationships and the passage of time, the series also engages us with Kjartansson’s interest in the conflation of reality and fantasy as mother and son slip into their professional roles. 

For the first time in the UK, Kjartansson’s series of 144 paintings, The End (2009), made over a 6-month period during the Venice Biennale, are on display. As his native country was in the midst of an unprecedented economic meltdown, Kjartansson inhabited the role of a bohemian artist, painting the portrait of the same young model, day after day, drinking and smoking against the backdrop of the Grand Canal. While the project served to document the artist’s own experience, his obsessive repetition of the same subject and maniacal accumulation of paintings hinted at the nihilism of art in the face of the real world. Drawing and painting are an essential part of Kjartansson’s practice and the exhibition also includes a selection of his intimate Moleskin sketchbooks and watercolour paintings for his durational performances.
To coincide with the exhibition, Kjartansson has conceived a new work of a mirrored scene of movement and symmetry entitled Second Movement (2016) for the Barbican Lakeside every Saturday and Sunday. In a theatrical reality, two women in quintessential Edwardian costume row their boat on the Barbican Lakeside embracing in a never-ending kiss. With gentleness and tension and the feeling of Mozart’s famous composition Second Movement of Piano Concerto 21 echoing from the title, the performance is in stark contrast to the Brutalist surrounds of the centre.

Ragnar Kjartansson was born in Reykjavík, Iceland in 1976, where he lives and works. His recent solo exhibitions and performances include, Krieg (War), Volksbühne, Berlin (2016); #ragnarkjartansson: Woman in E , Museum of #contemporaryart Detroit (2016); Seul celui qui connaît le désir, Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2015—16); Me, My Mother, My Father and I, New Museum, New York (2014); The Palace of the Summerland, Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary, Vienna (2014); The Explosive Sonics of Divinity, Volksbühne, Berlin (2014); The Visitors, Luhring Augustine Gallery, New York; Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Zurich (2012 — 13); Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary, Vienna (2013) and HangarBicocca , Milan (2013—14); It’s Not the End of the World, Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin (2012—13); Song, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; Museum of #contemporaryart, North Miami and Institute of #contemporaryart, Boston (2011— 2012). Kjartansson performed A Lot of Sorrow, with The National at MoMA P.S.1, New York (2013). Kjartansson was the recipient of Performa’s 2011 Malcolm McLaren Award for his performance of Bliss , a twelve-hour live loop of the final aria of Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro and in 2009 he was the youngest artist to represent Iceland at the Venice Biennale.
Ragnar Kjartansson
Barbican Centre, #london, UK
14 July – 4 September 2016
Media View, 13 July 2016, 10am –1pm
RagnarKjartansson
The exhibition is supported by the Embassy of Iceland
Public Information
RagnarKjartansson @Barbicancentre
Barbican Art Gallery, #london, 0845 120 7550, www.barbican.org.uk/artgallery
Opening hours:
Saturday to Wednesday, 10am – 6pm / Thursday & Friday, 10am – 9pm
Bank Holiday Mondays: 12noon – 6pm / Bank Holiday Fridays: 12noon – 9pm

Tickets
Standard: £12.00 / Concessions (OAP and unemployed): £10 / Students/14-17: £8 / Young Barbican: £5 (no booking fees) / Art Fund Members: £8 / Membership Plus: Unlimited free entry + guest / Membership: Unlimited free entry

Photography
Non-flash photography of the exhibition is encouraged.
RagnarKjartansson @Barbicancentre

Exhibition
Exhibition curated by the Barbican and organised in collaboration with the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C., where a version of the exhibition will be shown from 14 October 2016 to 8 January 2017.

Catalogue
The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue published by Walter Koenig, designed by John Morgan Studio, featuring a pictorial autobiography compiled by Kjartansson himself, an introductory essay by Markús Andrésson , two commissioned essays by curator Kelly Gordon and Art Forum writer Jeffrey Kastner, as well as a new text by Canadian essayist and poet Anne Carson.
ISBN: 978-3-86335-970-6 . Price: £34.95

Events
A rich programme of talks and events accompanies the exhibition, with more events to be added to the programme soon. Check the website for full listings: www.barbican.org.uk/artgallery

An Evening with the Bel-Air Glamour Records Gang
Tue 19 July 7.30pm, Barbican Theatre
£15–23, plus booking fee
As a part of his residency in the Art Gallery, Icelandic artist #ragnarkjartansson hosts an evening of performance art, poetry and experimental music featuring Kjartan Sveinsson (formerly of Sigur Rós), Bryce and Aaron Dessner (The National), Kristín Anna, Margrét Bjarnadóttir, Halldór Laxness Halldórsson, Gyða Valtýsdóttir and Davíð Þór Jónsson .

In Conversation: #ragnarkjartansson
Wed 20 Jul 6.45pm, Cinema 2
£8
Ragnar Kjartansson discusses his work, life experiences and inspirations.

The Things They Do
Fri 29 Jul 10am – 5pm, Garden Room & Conservatory
£10, concessions available
An experimental symposium inspired by Kjartansson’s interest in making art out of the things that other #people do - like painting seascapes and playing in rock bands, involving a mixture of sincerity and the ridiculous. Artists and writers present talks and performances to explore this experience. Includes contributions from young artists involved in a week-long workshop with artist Simon Vincenzi.

Exhibition Tours
Every Thursday at 7pm, exhibition tours are conducted by curators, academics, journalists and specialists in their field.
Tickets: £12 (includes same day entry to the exhibition).

Exhibition Tour with Oliver Basciano
Thu 21 Jul, 7pm
Oliver Basciano, writer and managing editor at ArtReview journeys through the exhibition examining Kjartansson’s skilful approach in blurring the distinction between art and life.

Exhibition Tour with Vlatka Horvat
Thu 28 Jul, 7pm
Artist Vlatka Horvat transforms images and spaces into enthralling objects. In her tour of the exhibition she discusses the transformative power of Kjartansson’s art.

Exhibition Tour with Ben Luke
Thu 4 Aug, 7pm
Contemporary art critic at the Evening Standard and features editor at The Art Newspaper, Ben Luke, looks at the interplay between reality and fiction within Kjartansson’s work.

Exhibition Tour with Leila Hasham
Thu 11 Aug, 7pm
Curator Leila Hasham gives a guided tour of the exhibition exploring Ragnar Kjartansson’s works ranging from video, performance, painting and drawing.

Exhibition Tour with Thomas Kennedy
Thu 18 Aug, 7pm
Exhibition Assistant Thomas Kennedy leads a guided tour of the exhibition exploring Ragnar Kjartansson’s dramatic and humorous works.

Exhibition Tour with Dr Eirini Kartsaki
Thu 25 Aug, 7pm
Dr Eirini Kartsaki, Teaching Fellow in Drama and Performance Studies at Queen Mary University leads a tour of the exhibition examining the role of repetition and duration in Kjartansson’s work.