Ragnar Kjartansson
Ragnar Kjartansson
© Ragnar Kjartansson ©
© © Aurélien Mole ©
© Ragnar Kjartansson, World Light, 2015, film still., enregistré lors d’une performance, commande de Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary (Vienne) © Avec l'aimable autorisation de l’artiste & Luhring Augustine (New York); i8 Gallery (Reykjavik) ©
Ragnar Kjartansson
Bonjour
A performance which will repeat, during the entire duration of Ragnar Kjartansson's exhibition Seul celui qui connaît le désir
With, Margherita Bertoli, Vincent Gaudin, Arnaud Guy, Héloïse Lesimple, Hélisenne Lestringant, Guillaume Mivekannin, Léa Pérat and Yoann Piquet.
Costumes, Alexandra Langlois
Make up and Hair dressing, Justine Denis
Production Palais de Tokyo //With the support of Festival d’Automne à Paris
The work Bonjour is jointly produced by Palais de Tokyo ; Festival d’Automne à Paris
Partnership with France Culture
For his first personal exhibition in France, spanning all the level 1 galleries at the Palais de Tokyo, Ragnar Kjartansson’s unique work is at the crossroads between performance and cinema, painting and opera, outdoors and music. Amongst others, this is the occasion to discover a cinematic painting of the everyday, a landscape-inspired homage to Goethe, and a cinematographic adaptation of an epic Icelandic novel.
In parallel to the presentation of past works focussing on the themes of parentage and endless repetition, new works from the artist will also be on display. Among these will be: Bonjour (in coproduction with the Festival d’Automne à Paris), a continuous performance revolving around a flicker of the eyelids romance; Scenes from Western Culture, a collection of a dozen or so films - variants on everyday themes - such as a visit to the swimming pool, two young women having lunch together, and the chiming of a clock; or World Light, a cinematographic adaptation of an epic Icelandic novel (1937-1940) by Halldór Laxness - in an unedited version lasting several hours.
Toying with the inner workings of theatre and the driving forces at work in tragedy,
Ragnar Kjartansson subverts all genres and formats, blurring the boundaries between fiction and reality. He succeeds in bringing to the surface different emotions via melodramatic gestures, at the same time as revealing the reality at play in the fundaments of all forms of theatrical or lyrical representation