The End

In his video installation The End, Ragnar Kjartansson shows images he shot in the Canadian rocky mountains. There, he himself and his partner in crime, musician Davío Pór Jónsson present an extravagant performance in the open air, against a background of majestic unspoilt nature. The performers are wearing thick winter clothes but even so they struggle to keep their footing in the merciless frosty cold. The first images show the arrival of the artists who tune their instruments and very tentatively strike up a country song.

Kjartansson makes five different projections echo with each other. With his installation he refers to the historical, romanticized relationship between the artist and the landscape.

In his often spectacular and humorous work the Icelandic artist Ragnar Kjartansson (°1976) likes to combine lengthy live performances with music and undisguised romance. He always does so with an eye and an ear for the tragicomic spectacle of human existence, in which sorrow clashes with happiness, horror with beauty, drama with humour. He made The End for the Icelandic pavilion of the Venetian Biennial in 2009. There the installation was combined with a performance.