Tomorrow: our Ragnar Kjartansson exhibition opens! Over the past fifteen years, Icelandic artist Rag
Tomorrow: our Ragnar Kjartansson exhibition opens! Over the past fifteen years, Icelandic artist Ragnar Kjartansson (b. Reykjavik, 1976) has created an impressive body of work that brings together theater, music, literature, film, and painting. Resisting characterization by genre or medium, Kjartansson’s work navigates extremes of high art and popular culture, sincerity and kitsch, playfulness and the depths of sorrow.In God 2007, Kjartansson stands in front of the camera dressed as a debonair 1950s crooner, with an eleven-piece orchestra behind him atop raised platforms draped in pink satin. Pink draperies also wrap the room in which the video is projected. The cabaret-like setting and overt reference to Hollywood glitziness underscore the over-the-top theatricality of the video. With an empty smile, Kjartansson sings a single refrain, “sorrow conquers happiness,” repeatedly in an absurdist mantra, modulating his intonation slightly as the orchestral arrangement changes, moving from delicate piano and harp to sumptuous cacophonous blasts of brass, strings, and percussion. Kjartansson is so convincing as the suave entertainer, devoted to his performance, that the tension between affectation and sincerity swings like a pendulum. -- source link
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