Java.JAN.2019-Singles

ARTS
SCANDINAVIAN PAIN AT PAM
By Mikey Foster Estes
“Scandinavian Pain and Other Myths” presents three
distinct works by Icelandic artist Ragnar Kjartansson.
Organized by Phoenix Art Museum and curated by
Gilbert Vicario, the exhibition pairs The Visitors,
an expansive video installation newly added to
the collection, with two other key works. Though
differing from one another in terms of format, this
sampling of Kjartansson’s oeuvre highlights the scope
of the artist’s playful approach to performance.
Kjartansson, having grown up in the theatre – his
mother an actress and his father a director and
playwright – often creates works that engage in
pretending, evolve through repetition, and pull from
both history and popular culture. In theatre and film,
the audience is well aware of fiction, and Kjartansson
applies that set of relations to his projects that
span across multiple mediums: video installation,
durational performance, painting, and drawing.
The two works presented alongside The Visitors are
remnants of performative actions but are presented
outside of their original context. Scandinavian
Pain, from which the exhibition takes its title, is
an 11-meter-long (36 ft.) neon sign that diagonally
protrudes through the space. Its hot pink glow directly
contradicts its bleak phrasing. The sign, originally
installed outdoors atop a barn in Norway, loses a bit
of its pointed irony here, but it sets the stage for its
salon-style companion, The End – Venezia.
Extending along the walls from floor to ceiling, the
144 paintings that compose The End were produced
as part of a durational performance – Kjartansson’s
contribution to the 2009 Venice Biennale. For six
months, the artist adopted the persona of a bohemian
artist and worked out of a studio that was open to
the public. His muse, fellow performance artist Páll
Haukur Björnsson, appears in each painting donning
a Speedo.
The paintings, which display a range of scenes and
styles, playfully satirize the myth of the artist and
muse. Equal parts endurance and method acting,
the performance situates the artist as an actor and
the public as an audience. Kjartansson’s deflation of
the figure of the artist speaks not only to antiquated
myth but to contemporary realities, as well. Through
elaborate staging, Kjartansson mocks the weight we
put on “truth” – in this case, we the audience are in
on it.
The Visitors, perhaps Kjartansson’s best-known
work, has its own space at the back of the gallery.
The expansive work, a nine-channel video and audio
installation that spans just over an hour, can be heard
even before one walks in. Set at an estate in upstate
New York, each video, carefully composed as in a
painting, features a musician (including the artist)
secluded in a different area of the house. Separated
yet together, the figures perform a sprawling piece
of music with repeating lyrical bits adapted from
a poem by Ásdís Sif Gunnarsdóttir, Kjartansson’s
ex-wife.
The song reverberates over the course of the hour.
Performers take breaks, move from one channel
to another, and collectively pour emotion into the
16 JAVA
MAGAZINE