Once Again I Fall Into My Feminine Ways

Ragnar Kjartansson's Woman in E takes place in a circular room built from a gold tinsel drapery. Dissimilar many of his works, Woman in E features real people, rather than films. Cathy Carver/Courtesy of the artist, Luhring Augustine (New York) and i8 Gallery (Reykjavík) hide caption

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Cathy Carver/Courtesy of the artist, Luhring Augustine (New York) and i8 Gallery (Reykjavím)

Ragnar Kjartansson's Woman in E takes place in a round room built from a gold tinsel curtain. Different many of his works, Woman in E features real people, rather than films.

Cathy Carver/Courtesy of the artist, Luhring Augustine (New York) and i8 Gallery (Reykjavím)

Creative person Ragnar Kjartansson stands surrounded by women in golden strapless gowns. One by one, the women climb onto a slowly rotating pedestal to practise their operation: strumming an Eastward minor chord on a golden guitar for 2 and a half hours. The grouping is rehearsing in a clangorous gallery at the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, D.C. The piece, Adult female in E, is a new-ish work past Kjartansson, 1 of the fine art world'due south biggest stars.

"It's so ridiculously elementary," he tells the women, all local musicians. He advises them to retrieve of their time on the dais as a reprieve from our Add world of mobile phones and social media. Then he chuckles and concedes, "Information technology's gonna be listen-blowingly boring sometimes."

Artist Ragnar Kjartansson grew upward in the theater globe with an actress mother and playwright/director begetter. Cathy Carver/Courtesy of the Hirshhorn Museum hide caption

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Cathy Carver/Courtesy of the Hirshhorn Museum

Artist Ragnar Kjartansson grew up in the theater world with an actress mother and playwright/managing director father.

Cathy Carver/Courtesy of the Hirshhorn Museum

Kjartansson is Icelandic, but he's spent the past twelvemonth trotting from Berlin to London to Tel Aviv to Detroit. He's had more than 20 exhibitions in the past yr alone, and been celebrated with worshipful profiles in The New Yorker and the New York Times Magazine.

"He'due south a huge deal," says Hirshhorn Chief Curator Stéphane Aquin, who organized Kjartansson'southward Washington show. "He's been sort of rocking the art world in the last 10 or 15 years with amazing performances."

Aquin says Kjartansson is best known for endurance-based works like Me and My Mother, a film serial that shows his mother spitting on him every v years, and The Visitors, for which he filmed ix musicians (including himself) in a aging Georgian mansion in upstate New York. Each musician occupies his or her own screen in a dark room at the Hirshhorn. One is lying on bed; another is in a bathtub. Their lovely faces are illuminated by soft morning lite. Over and over, they play the aforementioned enigmatic phrase: "Once more, I autumn into my feminine ways." (The expression is from Kjartansson's ex-married woman; the slice was filmed in the wake of their divorce.)

Nine musicians occupy their own screen in The Visitors, seen here in a night room at the Hirshhorn. People often cry when they sit through a few cycles of Kjartansson's pieces. Cathy Carver/ Courtesy of the artist, Luhring Augustine (New York) and i8 Gallery (Reykjavík) hide explanation

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Cathy Carver/ Courtesy of the artist, Luhring Augustine (New York) and i8 Gallery (Reykjavík)

Nine musicians occupy their own screen in The Visitors, seen here in a nighttime room at the Hirshhorn. People often cry when they sit through a few cycles of Kjartansson'south pieces.

Cathy Carver/ Courtesy of the artist, Luhring Augustine (New York) and i8 Gallery (Reykjavík)

"Weighing my words, it is considered one of the greatest works of our young century," Aquin says. "It is moving. It takes it out of you. It is just, besides, touching." People often cry when they sit down through a few cycles of Kjartansson's pieces, something this reporter personally observed at the Hirshhorn testify.

Kjartansson filmed The Visitors' musicians in a aging mansion in 2012. Elisabet Davids/Courtesy of the creative person, Luhring Augustine (New York) and i8 Gallery (Reykjavík) hide caption

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Elisabet Davids/Courtesy of the artist, Luhring Augustine (New York) and i8 Gallery (Reykjavík)

Kjartansson filmed The Visitors' musicians in a crumbling mansion in 2012.

Elisabet Davids/Courtesy of the artist, Luhring Augustine (New York) and i8 Gallery (Reykjavík)

The mesmerizing quality of repetition — and the catharsis it tin bring — was impressed on the creative person past his actress female parent and playwright/manager father. Kjartansson grew up backstage while they worked. "Watching them in the theater just repeating the same scenes over and again — that sort of created what I exercise in my fine art," he says.

But Kjartansson says he didn't draw from an Icelandic visual fine art tradition. Rather, he says the state is improve known for stories. "The air is thick with culture and history, but at that place's cipher to prove information technology. It's only all these histories and sagas, but no monuments or old ruins or anything. Information technology's just: You're standing on a colina and and then much stuff happened on this hill and and then much poesy has been written well-nigh this hill — but information technology'southward but a hill."

Kjartansson jokes that beingness Icelandic might be an advantage in a competitive global art world, where nationality can exist deployed as a gimmick. "There'due south that innocence about being Icelandic," he cracks. "People just think you're cute."

His performances are filmed and released in express editions which sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars. He says much of his piece of work, with its emphasis on repetition, is ultimately about failing to reach perfection. "All the longing to make something great — merely it's never corking; information technology's always mediocre. And I simply love that. I only love it when human beings are trying to achieve something and information technology sort of doesn't happen. I think it's the ultimate human moment."

A moment Ragnar Kjartansson enjoys showcasing — lovingly — over and over and again.

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Source: https://www.npr.org/2016/10/28/498718095/art-star-ragnar-kjartansson-moves-people-to-tears-over-and-over