Ragnar Kjartansson (performance artist)

[5] Kjartansson's exhibition "Epic Waste of Love and Understanding", held at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art from August to October 2023, showcased his diverse approach, from endurance-testing repetition to subtly nuanced explorations of human connection, often blending humor and introspection.

Spanning six screens that encircle the room, the installation surrounds viewers with a performance of spatial music written for eight dancers with eight guitars.

Recorded from the center of the performers’ space, the installation is kaleidoscopic, capturing the dancers as they weave within each screen and across the channels; their movements and melodies ranging from pastorale to rock and roll.

Combining a variety of classic Western references – blue jeans and white t-shirts, the draped silk curtains of mid-20th century song and dance films, as well as lyrics drawn from the Archaic Greek poet Sappho and adventurer Vivant Denon, two sensualists millennia apart – the work spins notions of idealization and iconography.

It is also a reflection on our ideals of beauty, our search for it, and the absurdity of its representations, inspired by the frivolity and reality of Rococo paintings, classical ballet, and modern pop music videos.

The piece is displayed across nine different screens, each featuring musicians or artists either by themselves or in groups in different rooms of a house, or outside, performing simultaneously but separately.

The piece was originally shown at the Migros Museum in Switzerland, and premiered in the United States in early 2013 at the Luhring Augustine Gallery.

The property was the site of an earlier 2007 piece by Ragnar, titled The Blossoming Trees Performance, during which he recorded himself as a plein-air painter for two days.

In 2014, Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary (TBA21) commissioned Ragnar and a group of 20 artists, musicians, and friends to create the two-part project The Palace of the Summerland.