News from the Icelandic Pavilion in Venice
Ragnar Kjartansson – The End
The same procedure day after day. The participants are still kept in a time loop. Each morning the pavilion doors are opened by the guard, the first visitors enter the exhibition, later on the artist arrives followed by the model. Ragnar Kjartansson pulls out a blank canvas out of the pile, puts it on the easel and starts to prepare his tools. In the meanwhile Páll Haukur Bjönsson puts on his black-yellow bathing trunks and lightens his first cigarette of the day. The painting which will be the result of the day will not much differ from the almost one hundred Kjartansson has already painted. The constant repetition includes the audience with questions and comments in only slight variations. The splashing water, old recordings of Mozart’s requiem or ABBA and of course the music coming from the video-installation in the other room form the soundtrack to Iceland’s “Groundhog Day” in Venice.
After three months almost 30.000 people came to see the Icelandic pavilion. That is an incredible success which can be mainly explained with the overwhelming international media coverage and the fact that the entire district close to Rialto Bridge became an exciting cluster of several national pavilions and additional projects.
The time-loop will continue until its final day on November 22nd and one can expect an appropriate celebration of the last brush stroke.
There is good news for art lovers: a few copies of a special edition of 13 black and white photographs of the performance plus one drawing from Ragnar Kjartansson in Venice are still available (for a very fair price of 2.500 USD). It is an edition of 30 (plus 5 artist proofs). For more information check the official website www.cia.is/venice.
After three months almost 30.000 people came to see the Icelandic pavilion. That is an incredible success which can be mainly explained with the overwhelming international media coverage and the fact that the entire district close to Rialto Bridge became an exciting cluster of several national pavilions and additional projects.
The time-loop will continue until its final day on November 22nd and one can expect an appropriate celebration of the last brush stroke.
There is good news for art lovers: a few copies of a special edition of 13 black and white photographs of the performance plus one drawing from Ragnar Kjartansson in Venice are still available (for a very fair price of 2.500 USD). It is an edition of 30 (plus 5 artist proofs). For more information check the official website www.cia.is/venice.
List: Icelandic Art News is published by the Center for Icelandic Art, a cooperative project of Iceland's museums and artists' organisations. List is edited by Christian Schoen and Jón Proppé. If you wish not to receive announcements of our new issues - or you want to contact us for any other reason - please send a mail to list@cia.is.
