Ragnar Kjartansson is an artist of many moods.

Ragnar Kjartansson is an artist of many moods.

Sorrow Conquers Happiness was the refrain that Ragnar sang over and over in his recent video performance at the Living Art Museum.

Scene from a recent video piece where Ragnar represents the plight of the artist as a lone gunman wandering the snow-covered highlands, occationally letting off a shot at nothing in particular.

This was Ragnar's contribution to an exhibition in 2007, commemorating the nineteenth-century poet and icon of Iceland's independence struggle, Jónas Hallgrímsson. The austere past meets the frivolous present as Ragnar arranges scantily-clad "babes" on the poet's tomb.

Scandinavian Pain, 2006, installation. For Momentum 2006, Ragnar Kjartansson took over an abandoned barn on the grounds of Galleri F15. On the barn’s roof he erected a large pink neon sign that read ’Scandinavian Pain’, and inside filled the building with paintings, drawings and sound, creating a kind of stage set. Inspired by such ’preachers of pain’ as Edvard Munch, Ingmar Bergman and Hallgrímur Pértursson, Kjartansson lived in the barn for a week-long performance, acting out the stereotype of the miserable Scandinavian male.

Folksong, 2007, 10 Day Performance in 25th street, Chelsea, organized by Hessel Foundation. Folksong was a ten-day performance. For six hours a day, Ragnar Kjartansson will stand in his tableau vivant of autumn trees and setting sun, singing his heart out to passers-by. The work is a European's bona fide take on America, loaded with clichés from different cultural productions. Dressed in cocktail wear and braced with a shiny red hollow body and a powerful amplifier, Kjartansson performs over and over again a short verse from an unknown but strangely familiar song.