ART CITIES:Helsinki-Ragnar Kjartansson
Ragnar Kjartansson engages multiple artistic mediums, creating video installations, performances, drawings, and paintings that draw upon myriad historical and cultural references. An underlying pathos and irony connect his works, with each deeply influenced by the comedy and tragedy of classical theater. The artist blurs the distinctions between mediums, approaching his painting practice as performance, likening his films to paintings, and his performances to sculpture.
By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Kiasma Archive
A sentimental portrayal of friendship, love, and loss, Ragnar Kjartansson’s masterwork “The Visitors” (2012) is on show at Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma. “The Visitors” is a monumental nine-channel sound and moving-image installation of a performance staged at Rokeby Farm, a historic 43-room estate in Barrytown on the Hudson River, a historic house owned by the Aldrich family since 1688 and remarkable for its nearly untouched state and elegant disrepair, the work is a hymn to romantic love (and its dissolution. Each of the individual audio/video channels features musicians, including Kristín Anna and Gyða Valtýsdóttir, founding sisters of the Icelandic band Mùm; Kjartan Sveinsson, former member of Sigur Rós; and Davíð Þór Jónsson, Kjartansson’s longtime collaborator and co-composer of the musical arrangement. The lyrics are taken from the poem “Feminine Ways,” written by Kjartansson’s former wife and fellow artist Ásdís Sif Gunnarsdóttir. The title alludes to the 1981 album of the same name from Swedish pop band ABBA, the group’s last record to date, as divorce and internal strife ended their professional and personal relationships. The musical composition coheres in the work’s installation, presenting a dynamic and moving ensemble performance Kjartansson refers to as a “feminine nihilistic gospel song”. The nine visitors take up various spaces indoors and out the sitting room, the kitchen, the bathroom, the veranda, each one inhabiting a separate yet very distinct setting, playing various instruments and singing as if to themselves the piece’s main tune. It is only in the synchronization of the nine channels that the voices and instruments merge into a harmonic orchestration. Nothing disturbs the aura of the performers not even the Fender amps that modulate the sounds, the microphones and recording devices intruding into the camera frame, or the whiskey bottles hidden in the snow. Instead, the clutter, the debris, the seeming mishaps, and the misplaced objects mesmerize the viewer and bind the gaze. They authenticate the ephemeral moment and thus create a diaphanous transition between performance, music, and film, the interrelated fields of Kjartansson’s ambitious artistic practice. For Kjartansson, making music together with friends was the key point of this project. All nine videos are portraits of the artist’s close friends, but the work also deals with his divorce and a sense of ending. At the end of the video, the musicians step out of the mansion and walk onto the lawn together with the mansion’s real residents. Through its unique arrangement of music in space, “The Visitors” creates a layered portrait of the house and its musical inhabitants.
Info: Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, Mannerheiminaukio 2, Helsinki, Duration 11/10/19-2/2/20, Days & Hours: Tue & Sat 10:00-18:00, Wed-Fri 10:00-20:30, Sun 10:00-17:00, https://kiasma.fi
