Reykjavík Grapevine - 19.07.2019, Side 36

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Beyond Death
And Satan
Faroe Islands’ Nordic House exhibits
Ragnar Kjartansson’s “key works”
Words & Photos: a rawlings
Exhibition
‘Key Works’ is on show at Tørshavn’s
Nordic House until August 18th.
Entrance is free
Outside, it is warm. Faroese or-
chids and petit daisies undulate
with a light breeze, their forms
catching occasional sunlight as
clouds slip above them.
Inside the Faroe Islands’ Nor-
dic House, Ragnar Kjartansson
strums a guitar, buried up to his
waist in the green grass of a Rey-
kjavík park. This looped video
also depicts a sunny summer day,
similar to Tørshavn’s stunning
weather. Ragnar is bare-chest-
ed and sings, “Satan
is real.” The media
chooses to write ‘cli-
mate crisis’ instead of
‘climate change’ from
now on.
Ragnar’s video “Sa-
tan is real” (2004) is
one of four selected
works in his exhi-
bition ‘Nøkur verk’
(‘Key work s’). The
video is situated in
a dim hallway, steps
from the brightly lit
foyer where fifteen of his sea-
scape watercolour paintings are
hung as the series “Omnipresent
Salty Death” (2015). The paintings
are co-created by Ragnar and his
father, Kjartan Ragnarsson, in a
repetition of the Romantic form
and a meditation on heritage,
lineage, seamen, and semen. To
view “Satan” or Ragnar’s other
works, “Nur wer die Sehnsucht
kennt” and “A lot of sorrow,” you
must first pass the roiling waves
of “Death.”
Hand-painted
mountains
Beyond “Death” and “Satan,” you
have the option of entering two
exhibition rooms. The door on the
left is open, with light streaming
beyond. The door on the right is
closed, with a sign inviting en-
trance.
First, through the closed door,
into darkness.
Rock band The National are
projected on one wall of Dansist-
ofan. They play their song “A Lot
of Sorrow” repeatedly for 6 hours,
9 minutes, and 35 seconds—an
endurance which holds within it
elation and suffering. Original-
ly staged at MoMA PS1, “A Lot of
Sorrow” (2013-2014) is a repetition
of repetition recast in the Nordic
House’s lonely dance hall. Beyond
“Death” and “Satan,” “Sorrow”
fills a room.
Finally, through what’s open,
into the light.
Hand-painted mountains and
glaciers on plywood grace Nordic
House’s Skálin room. The piece
is titled “Nur wer die Sehnsucht
kennt” (“Only he who knows
yearning,” in English) (2015) af-
ter Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s
poem. As you walk between the
mise en scène of “Nur wer die
Sehnsucht kennt,” the mountain-
scape reveals the trick of the work
itself: mountains that are not
mountains, plywood that is not
plywood; an unfinished wish for a
place that was or that might be, a
place in the process of melting or a
place where humans never dwelt.
Romantic gestures
The mountainscape of “Nur wer
die Sehnsucht kennt” functions
as a stage set, and the capaci-
ty to move between the erected
plywood breaks the fourth wall
of the set-up. Indeed, in Ragnar’s
pieces, the audience is invited to
consider the set-up of each ro-
mantic gesture. This is a gentle
yet pointed critique of the little
theatres in which one situates
oneself, begging us to look again
at the man behind the curtain, at
the scaffolding and the material
holding each performance togeth-
er. Can you identify how the shape
that your longing takes to fill the
space between what materially,
concretely is, and what it is pro-
jected to be?
Yearning for interconnected-
ness, the amalgam of ‘Nøkur verk’
is whimsical melancholy writ
large on a summer’s day.”
Art
“The paintings
are co-created
by Ragnar and
his father in a
meditation on
heritage, lin-
eage, seamen,
and semen.”
A light-hearted show about fun subjects like sorrow
i8 Gallery
Tryggvagata 16
101 Reykjavík
info@i8.is
t: +354 551 3666
www.i8.is
6 June - 12 August 2019
B.INGRID OLSON
Fingered Eyed
VISIT KÓPAVOGUR
CULTURE HOUSES
AND EXPERIENCE

OUTLINE
06.04.–08.09.19
&
MENNINGARHUSIN.
K O P A V O G U R . I S
Hamraborg 4–6'Kópavogur Bus 1,(2,(4,(28,(35 & 36
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Salurinn'Concert Hall
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