i8 Gallery
Skip to main content
  • Menu
  • HOME
  • ARTISTS
  • EXHIBITIONS
  • PUBLIC EXHIBITIONS
  • ART FAIRS
  • SHOP
  • CONTACT
  • ABOUT
Cart
0 items $
Checkout

Item added to cart

View cart & checkout
Continue shopping
Menu

Ragnar Kjartansson: Epic Waste of Love and Understanding: Louisiana Museum, Humlebæk, DK

Past event
9 June - 22 October 2023 
Open a larger version of the following image in a popup: Installation photo: Louisiana Museum of Modern Art/Kim Hansen
Installation photo: Louisiana Museum of Modern Art/Kim Hansen

One of the must-see exhibitions of 2023, according to The Art Newspaper, this presentation of Icelandic artist Ragnar Kjartansson features works in a variety of media, ranging from drawing and painting to performance and large-scale spatial works. The exhibition, entitled 'Epic Waste of Love and Understanding', is developed in close collaboration with the artist.

 

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.

 

He 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.

 

An array of video art, paintings, sculptures and drawings will be on display, including several of the artist’s most beloved works. Among them will be his 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.

 

Lesser-known pieces will include 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?”.

 

Ragnar Kjartansson has exhibited widely at leading art institutions around the world. The exhibition is the first major retrospective in Scandinavia and follows 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.

 

The exhibition is supported by the C.L David Foundation and Collection.

 
  • Read more

Related artist

  • RAGNAR KJARTANSSON

    RAGNAR KJARTANSSON

Share
  • Facebook
  • X
  • Pinterest
  • Tumblr
  • Email
Manage cookies
COPYRIGHT © 2025 i8 GALLERY
Site by Artlogic
Join the mailing list
Send an email
Facebook, opens in a new tab.
Instagram, opens in a new tab.
View on Google Maps

This website uses cookies
This site uses cookies to help make it more useful to you. Please contact us to find out more about our Cookie Policy.

Manage cookies
Accept

Cookie preferences

Check the boxes for the cookie categories you allow our site to use

Cookie options
Required for the website to function and cannot be disabled.
Improve your experience on the website by storing choices you make about how it should function.
Allow us to collect anonymous usage data in order to improve the experience on our website.
Allow us to identify our visitors so that we can offer personalised, targeted marketing.
Save preferences
Close

Join our mailing list

Signup

* denotes required fields

We will process the personal data you have supplied in accordance with our privacy policy (available on request). You can unsubscribe or change your preferences at any time by clicking the link in our emails.