Ragnar Kjartansson
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Grapevine Events: Latin American Film Festival, Jólaportið, Brumm Brumm Exhibition & More
The city is twinkling with lights, and people are buzzing about town. It’s December! We’ve rounded up some happenings for you to shelter in when you get too cold as you walk about The Christmas City (Jólaborgin). On Friday, artist-run Herma celebrates…
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Fine Art And Flow: Þula Gallery Spreads Its Wings
The work of the gallerist is an opaque craft. They are the people who help artists navigate the tricky terrain of the industry — networking and dealmaking, detail-wrangling and logistics, hand-holding, hustling, and a lot more besides. They need to have a…
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Grapevine Events: Winter Lights Festival, Museum Night & More
In one of the darkest times of the year, the Winter Lights Festival brightens the city with colourful lights dancing on buildings and even Hallgrímskirkja. Neon pink and green bulbs dress the streetlights, lending the city an edgy atmosphere. For Museum Night…
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Grapevine Events: Icelandic Sorcery Festival, Drag Expanded & So Much More
Ahead of Record Store Day on April 20, Grapevine’s journalists Jóhannes Bjarkason and Rex Beckett discussed the hottest happenings in town in our new events podcast. But if you’re feeling like you could squeeze a few more events into your weekend schedule,…
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Grapevine Events: Happy Beer Day
Three words: Happy Beer Day! Go get yourself a pint and celebrate having the choice to drink it. It wasn’t accessible in this country 35 years ago. For those who don’t celebrate, this weekend brings concerts, exhibitions and so much more. Beer…
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Ragnar Kjartansson’s Art Pieces Not Art, According To Directorate Of Customs
Following a recent customs ruling, artist Ragnar Kjartansson needs to pay value-added tax for a hundred salt and pepper shakers imported to Iceland. The artist designed a thousand copies of porcelain salt and pepper shakers intended for his art installations. The objects…
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A Rollercoaster Of Absurdity, Tragedy, Joy
Ragnar Kjartansson’s retrospective Epic Waste of Love and Understanding hits Denmark’s Louisiana Museum The fact that Denmark‘s biggest contemporary art museum is currently hosting a retrospective exhibition of artist Ragnar Kjartansson is simultaneously mind-boggling and almost incredibly banal. On one hand,…
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Death Is Elsewhere: Ragnar Kjartansson On A Summer’s Night
Ragnar Kjartansson is a man of surprises, seeming to delight in surprising himself as much, or even more, than surprising others. ‘Death Is Elsewhere’ (called ‘Sumarnótt’ in Icelandic, which translates to ‘summer night’), a video installation of his that has been getting…
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Two Icelanders On Top 25 Artists Of 21st Century List, One Of Them In Top Spot
Two Icelandic artists not only made the cut in The Guardian’s Best Visual Art Of The 21st Century list; one of them, Ragnar Kjartansson (seen above), made the top spot. Ragnar topped the list, beating out such celebrated artists as Ai Wewei…
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Beyond Death And Satan: Ragnar Kjartansson’s “Key Works” On Show In The Faroes
Outside, it is warm. Faroese orchids and petit daisies undulate with a light breeze, their forms catching occasional sunlight as clouds slip above them. Inside the Faroe Islands’ Nordic House, Ragnar Kjartansson strums a guitar, buried up to his waist in the…
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Clichés From Civilization: Ragnar Kjartansson On Epic Screensavers, Theatre & Nobility
For nearly two decades Ragnar Kjartansson has worked within various realms of art. His most recent piece—‘Figures in Landscape’—is a video installation and a sort of clock that presents an alternate perception of time. It’s his most high-tech endeavour to date, but…
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A Deal With The Universe: Kristín Anna Navigates The Personal And The Professional
A distinctly enigmatic character with a unique, ultra-high pitched voice, Kristín Anna Valtýsdóttir has been a widely recognised figure in Icelandic music and art for nearly two decades. Previously known as Kría Brekkan and now as simply Kristín Anna, the multi-instrumentalist has…
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God, I Feel So Bad: Ragnar Kjartansson Takes Over Hafnarhúsið
Ragnar Kjartansson is an unlikely art star. Since his emergence onto the cultural scene as a musical and artistic provocateur, he has risen from playful, punky experimentalist to perhaps the single most successful visual artist Iceland has ever produced. After shows at…
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NÝLÓ Captures Iceland’s Mercurial Art Scene
It’s often noted that Iceland has a vibrant and thriving arts culture for a country of 330,000 people. In music, literature and visual art, Iceland punches far above its weight, producing an impressive amount of world class artists, in various disciplines. But…
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Iceland Trolls At Biennale
Icelandic artist Egill Sæbjörnsson knows how to steal the show. His repertoire features bodily fluids and phallic objects, so it’s no surprise that when chosen to represent Iceland this year at the world famous Venice Biennale, he decided to handover his position…
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Rite Of Spring: ‘Fórn’ Is Now Showing In Reykjavík
Somewhere between the repugnant and the pure, the orgiastic and the tortuous, the brutal and the delicate, there is sacrifice. A sacrifice of the physical, the psychic or of long-held ideals. In ‘Fórn’ (“Sacrifice,” in English), the new performance by the Iceland…
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The Art Wolves: The Kling & Bang Gallery Powers Up
At the very end of Reykjavík’s windblown concrete harbour, Grandi, stands a hulking white building known as the Marshall House. It was purpose-built as a fish processing plant in the 1950s, with several tall vertical spaces that once held towering herring oil…
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Happening This Weekend: Sequences Festival
Sequences Festival turns ten! Since 2006 Sequences Art Festival has provided ten-days of visual arts with a special focus on time-based mediums: performances, sound works, videos, public displays and so forth. The seventh edition of the festival explores our inner- and under-workings…
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Artist Uses Simpsons Reference To Poke Gentle Fun At Yoko Ono
Icelandic artist Ragnar Kjartansson created an elaborate Simpsons reference as a light-hearted dedication to Yoko Ono. RÚV reports that Yoko had asked Ragnar, along with several other Icelandic artists, to create works dedicated to her. Ragnar decided to go with the following…
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“I Love Him” – Icelandic Artists Pay Tribute To Lemmy
Snæbjörn Ragnarsson Viking-metalhead (Skálmöld) R.I.P LEMMY Motörhead was never my favourite band. It was just one of those bands we all listened to from the very beginning, and have listened to ever since. I got into metal when I was just a…
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Great Expectorations: Ragnar Kjartansson’s Mother Spits In His Face Every Five Years
“I never look forward to seeing a film when I’m in it,” says actress Guðrún Ásmundsdóttir, 79, as she pours coffee and lays out cheese and biscuits on the dining table of her Vesturbær home. “But it will be okay, I’m sure.”…
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Opening Today: ‘Me And My Mother’ By Ragnar Kjartansson
Has your mother ever spat on you? Ragnar Kjartansson’s has. In fact, she’s spat on him every five years since 2000 (at least, those are the times that we know of). Ragnar is perhaps best known for his performance, installation and video…
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The Feminine Ways
At the beginning of a new year, it is absolutely necessary to take an honest inventory of the preceding one’s victories and mishaps in the field of the fine arts. The Reykjavík Grapevine is not the right platform for an honest and…