Named by the Washington Post a superstar of contemporary art and present in the 1st place in The Guardian’s list of the best works of art of the 21st century, with the video installation “The Visitors”, the famous artist Ragnar Kjartansson has arrived in Bucharest to support an artist talk and present one of the most exciting video works in his portfolio – Bliss (2020).
The event is organized by Gaep (Bucharest), in partnership with i8 (Reykjavík), one of the galleries representing Kjartansson, and will take place on Saturday, March 18, at ARCUB Hanul Gabroveni.
Ragnar Kjartansson will reveal to the public the stories behind his works. Kjartansson will talk about the production of this video, about his journey, from his childhood spent behind the scenes of the theater where his parents were actors, to his current international career. Kjartansson will be in conversation with the representatives of the two galleries – i8, Börkur Arnarson, and Gaep – Andrei Breahnă.
The video projection of the work Bliss will take place in the Great Hall on the same day and will run from 11:00 a.m. to 11:00 p.m. without interruption, completely in line with the live performance, which was for the vocal performers and the orchestra a resilient marathon lasting 12 hours. The biennial Performa 11 in New York commissioned the initial performance in 2011.
Entry is free, and the public is welcome for the artist talk and viewing of the work screening – either 12 minutes or 12 hours, as they choose. Visitors are encouraged to come back during the screening to see how the full-length video-recorded performance transforms along the way.
Regarded as one of the most fascinating and prominent figures in contemporary art, Ragnar Kjartansson masters genres, artistic mediums and multiple roles, assuming in his works not only the role of a visual artist, but also that of a director, musician or actor. His artistic practice focuses on theatricality and ritual, as well as their common features: repetition and endurance.
The video work Bliss (2020) is a genre masterpiece, based on Kjartansson’s performance of the same name, and is a staging of the final aria from “The Marriage of Figaro”, composed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
The video work replicates the opulence of traditional opera production, with orchestra, lavish sets, and rococo costumes, and is presented by an ensemble of vocal performers – including the artist himself. They perform the same three-minute aria consecutively for 12 hours. As a result of this extreme form of repetition, the aria metamorphoses, starting, at first, from an elegant manner of interpretation, towards the ironic, then ecstatic style.
In the end, it returns to its original delicacy but remains burdened by the emotional and physical weight of a 12-hour non-stop performance.
Ragnar Kjartansson lives and works in Reykjavík. He has had personal exhibitions in prestigious museums, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Reykjavík Art Museum; Barbican Centre, London; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Park, Washington D.C.; Palais de Tokyo, Paris; New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York; Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh.
His awards include the Ars Fennica Award (2019), Artes Mundi’s Derek Williams Trust Purchase Award (2015) and the Malcolm McLaren Award (2011), the latter for Best Artist Under 40 at the Performa 11 Biennale.
Kjartansson participated in the main exhibition of the 2013 Venice Biennale at Manifesta 10 in St. Petersburg, 2014, and represented Iceland at the 2009 Venice Biennale.
This event is organized under the umbrella of the “Accelerator. Mentoring and Production for Emerging Artists”, implemented by Eastwards Prospectus Cultural Association in partnership with i8 and Gaep. Accelerator is the first and most complex extended mentoring program currently running in Romania, which aims to propel the career of the 10 selected local emerging artists. The program included a consistent mentoring phase consisting of workshops and one-on-one sessions between emerging artists and cultural managers, curators or national and Icelandic artists.
The project is financed by the SEE Grants 2014 – 2021 within the RO-CULTURE Program and implemented by the Eastwards Prospectus Cultural Association (ACEP).
Schedule:
March 18, at ARCUB Hanul Gabroveni
Artist Talk (Great Hall, foyer) – from 17.00
Screening (Great Hall) – 11.00 am – 11.00 pm
