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Icelandic Pavilion
La Biennale di Venezia

Commissioner of the Icelandic Pavilion at the 52nd and 53rd International Art Exhibition - La Biennale di Venezia, 2007 und 2009.

Steingrimur Eyfjörd         Ragnar Kjartansson

Chairman of the selection committee for the Icelandic representatives at the Biennales 2007, 2009 und 2011.

 


 

The Icelandic Pavilion at La Biennale di Venezia 2009
Ragnar Kjartansson: The End

Ragnar Kjartansson - The End. Photo: Rafael Pinho 2009Ragnar Kjartansson - The End. Photo: Rafael Pinho 2009

Ragnar Kjartansson (b. 1976, Reykjavík, Iceland) conjures up emotions in his work that he can pass on to his viewers, with a keen eye for the tragicomic spectacle of human experience where sorrow collides with happiness, horror with beauty, and drama with humor. In his versatile artistic career, he has focused on video, painting, and drawing, with performance at the heart of his practice.
22 November 2009 was the final act of the six month performance in the medieval Palazzo Michiel, which Ragnar has turned into his studio. In an endless repetition he painted the same subject over and over again. His model, Páll Haukur Björnsson, was depicted standing, sitting or lying throughout the entire period, only dressed in a Speedo, drinking beer and smoking cigarettes. But the endurance performance was only one part of Ragnar Kjartansson`s project. The performance had its counterpart in a five-channel video installation, which showed him with his colleague, the musician David Thór Jónsson in the Canadian Rocky Mountains playing country music. The endless repetition of the same motive, as the artist practiced it in his painting-performance, could be found here in music.

Commissioner: Christian Schoen
Commissioning institution: Center for Icelandic Art
Curators: Markús Thór Andrésson & Dorthée Kirch
Catalogue: Ragnar Kjartansson. The End, C. Schoen (Ed.), Ostfildern (Hatje Cantz) 2009


 

The Icelandic Pavilion at La Biennale di Venezia 2007
Steingrimur Eyfjörd: The Golden Plover has arrived

Steingrimur Eyfjörd. The Golden Plover Has Arrived. Photo: Spessi 2007

In The Golden Plover Has Arrived, composed of 14 individually titled works, Eyfjörd scrutinizes the culture, economy and politics of various moments in Icelandic history, in a deconstruction of prevailing interpretations of the creation of modernity in the country.
Steingrimur Eyfjörd (b. 1954) is one of the foremost of a generation of artists who came to prominence in Iceland during the 1970s. His prolific output over the past 25 years draws on his experience not only as artist but as a comic strip author, magazine editor, writer, curator and teacher.

Commissioner: Christian Schoen
Commissioning institution: Center for Icelandic Art
Curators: Hanna Styrmisdóttir
Catalogue: Steingrimur Eyfjörd. The Golden Plover Has Arrived, Reykjavik 2007

 

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