Reykjavík Grapevine - 01.02.2019, Qupperneq 25

ress, and the visual propaganda
that has glamourized it through-
out art history. “I am referencing
preachy artworks like the Soviet
bas reliefs and Diego Rivera’s Ford
Motor Company murals,” he says.
“The figures in the white lab coats
represent logic, science and human
progress that roam a man-made
landscape. When a person puts on
a white lab coat it instantly repre-
sents the nobility of man. It’s sci-
ence and prosperity with a modern
nihilistic twist.”
Real-life screensavers
‘Figures in Landscape’ was in-
spired by the screensavers people
are subjected to every day. “I find it
interesting that in our everyday life
we still manage to be surrounded
by epic landscape on our comput-
er desktops and TV screens,” the
artist explains. “The scenes in my
new piece are clichés of the world
and resemble screensavers. There
is some movement, but to a com-
pletely disjointed extent. It’s life
floating by, and a screensaver for
the whole building.”
Ragnar’s video installations
have become more elaborate with
each passing year. “This is my most
technically complex piece to date,”
he admits. “The technology exists
to make it happen, but doing it is
quite unprecedented. It’s been a
tricky process. I find it a bit funny
that this piece looks effortless,
graceful and lo-fi at first glance but
is actually quite high-tech. It re-
minds me of how a ballerina has to
appear graceful, but goes through
pure hell to be that way.”
A lifelong obsession
As a child, Ragnar got to know the
theatre world through his parents,
who were both actors. “I was al-
ways fascinated by those old hand-
painted theatre backdrops,” he
explains. “I got the
chance to catch the
final wave of the-
atre productions
with romantic and
naturalistic set de-
signs.”
“I rememb er
hea r i ng p eople
criticise this clas-
sic way of set-
design,” he con-
t i nues. “People
found it too fake
a nd b e g a n u s-
i n g concept ua l
and more minimal set-design in-
stead.” Young Ragnar then thought
to himself: “This is in no way less
fake than the old backdrops.”
One day he went with his moth-
er—who was working on a play
about Reykjavík’s theatre history
at the time—to the attic of the Na-
tional Theatre. “I will never forget
seeing these old, rolled up back-
drops on the floor and unrolling
them,” he recalls.
The backdrops were made
around a century earlier by Sig-
urður Guðmundsson, an early
pioneer of Iceland’s theatre and
arts heritage. “Seeing them gave
me a life-long obsession,” Ragnar
admits. “It was like unravelling a
great mystery. They were the cool-
est things I had ever seen.”
Future influence
An aesthetic influence from the
world of theatre can be found in
numerous works by Ragnar, as
early as his art-
school gradua-
tion piece ‘The
Opera’ (2001)
and now in ‘Fig-
ures in Land-
scape.’
“ I n t h e
s u m m e r o f
2018, we con-
st r uc ted a nd
painted these
immense film-
sets for each
scene at t he
Reykjavík City
Theatre,” he explains. “I have a ter-
rific team of set designers I’ve got-
ten familiar working with from my
most recent works.”
Ragnar managed to create a
unique Icelandic workplace while
filming the scenes. “I felt it was
significant to have the figures rep-
resent civilization itself,” he says.
“So we hired a lot of people from
all corners of the world to create a
proper workplace environment. I
felt inclined to take it all the way.
It was a grand scale production of
people walking around the painted
backdrops for days. Showing up for
work was so much fun!”

“In our everyday
life we still man-
age to be sur-
rounded by epic
landscapes on
our computer
desktops and TV
screens.”
A figure in a landscape
Noble scientists