Celebrating the opening of Ragnar Kjartansson: Mercy, Icelandic artist Ragnar Kjartansson speaks with NGV Curator of Contemporary Art, Amita Kirpalani, to reflect on his creative practice – one steeped in humour, music, and theatre.
Kjartansson’s singular artistic voice is both playful and profound, inviting audiences into works that unfold with emotional depth and lyrical intensity. Through his evocative use of music, language and repetition, he crafts experiences that are at once disarming, tender, and deeply human.
Ragnar Kjartansson: Mercy, the first exhibition of its kind in Australia, presents new and recent video works that define Kjartansson’s art practice. Key works include his recent pastorale Sunday Without Love, in which we see people clad in folk costume in idyllic scenery, repeating the lament ‘You must learn to live without love, love is not good for you’; and the acclaimed nine-screen installation The Visitors, 2012, filmed at Rokeby mansion in upstate New York.
Ragnar Kjartansson is an Icelandic artist that is heralded as one of the most distinctive contemporary artists working today. Drawing on Western musical and artistic themes, Kjartansson offers an adoring and satirical spin on literature, cinema and pop music. Kjartansson engages in the tension between beauty and banality, often using durational, repetitive performance as a form of exploration. His major solo shows include exhibitions at the Museo Tamayo, Mexico City; Louisiana Museum, Humlebaek; the De Pont Museum, Tilburg; the Kunstmuseum Stuttgart; and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.