Ragnar Kjartansson: Emotional Landscapes – Announcements
Opening on February 22, 2022, Psychological Landscapes is a significant exhibition by Ragnar Kjartansson that characteristics 4 monumental online video installations from the TBA21 Collection, as perfectly as some of his works on paper on loan from other collections, installed inside the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza’s foremost collections of 19th and 20th-century American Artwork.
The exhibition’s title, Emotional Landscape, refers to lyrics by Icelandic visionary musician and artist Björk, which one-way links with each other notions of landscape and psychological point out, and underpins Kjartansson’s inspired reverence for the neighborhood spirit and vibrancy of Reykjavík’s creative and musical scene. His function naturally blends a myriad influences from an inventive way of lifestyle that began with an early like for literature and theater, encouraged by his family members of actors and singers, and a official creative education that ignited a strong admiration for the wonderful and the elegant do the job of 18th and 19th-century artists. Feeding an psychological and sensory creativeness, eclectic musical references are plentiful in Kjartansson’s get the job done and range from Mozart to Icelandic people songs, ‘60s Italo-pop, Nina Simone, Bob Dylan, Prince, electronic songs, to German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen.
Emotional Landscapes proposes to gather jointly for the very first time performs that are monumental in dimensions and immersive in character, offering opportunities to discover the interaction between Kjartansson’s do the job and legendary American imagery and builds upon TBA21’s fifteen-calendar year relationship with the artist, all through which the Basis has supported his observe by way of exhibitions, productions, and (co-)commissions. The exhibition also marks the start of the Foundation’s anniversary, celebrating twenty-12 months of advocacy and assist to the arts.
The exhibition involves some of Kjartansson’s most considerable installations—The Site visitors (2012), The Male (2010), The Stop (2009), and God (2007, co-commissioned by TBA21 and The Residing Artwork Museum in Reykjavík)—that merge functionality, durational effectiveness, and songs with resolute romanticism and a fascination with North The united states and the North American landscape. And together with the series of watercolors, From the Valley of Earth-Weariness in British Columbia (2011), it opens a dialogue with the collections of the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, which retains the most crucial assortment of nineteenth-century American landscape portray, in Europe.
In The Readers (2012), Kjartansson delivers together some of his good friends and most renowned musicians and composers in Iceland (Shahzad Ismaily, Davíð Þór Jónsson, Kristín Anna Valtýsdóttir, Kjartan Sveinsson, Þorvaldur Gröndal, Ólafur Jónsson, and Gyða Valtýsdóttir) to the historic nineteenth-century Rokeby Farm in Barrytown, New York.
In The Conclude (2009) the scenography echoes the traditionally romanticized custom of the artist in landscape, and was recorded with the musician Davíð Þór Jónsson in the snow capped Rocky Mountains.
In The Man (2010) Kjartansson recreates the common landscapes of Andrew Wyeth’s painting Christina’s Environment (1948) and turns it into a tribute and portrait of an vital figure in the evolution of American blues new music, the pianist and Delta bluesman Pinetop Perkins.
And in God (2007), Kjartansson emulates the timeless figure of a mid 20th century technicolor crooner by main a jazz orchestra in a seem stage placing.
“With new music and landscape as guiding threads,” this show is, in the words and phrases of its curator, TBA21 Chief Curator Soledad Gutiérrez, “a tour of thoughts, wherever psychological states function as spaces for a probable comprehending not only of ourselves but also of the communities we develop and, on that basis, the earth we inhabit. The functions on perspective are installed in distinctive spots of the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, generating new contexts for the reading through of the classical collections, reinforcing the thought that background allows us greater realize the present, although at the identical time, the existing and contemporary inventive tactics are elementary resources for revising and rethinking historical past.”
About Ragnar Kjartansson

Ragnar Kjartansson attracts on the whole arc of artwork in his performative follow. The history of film, music, theater, visible society and literature uncover their way into his video installations, durational performances, drawing and portray. Pretending and staging become crucial equipment in the artist’s attempt to express sincere emotion and present a authentic knowledge to the viewers. Kjartansson’s operate has been exhibited commonly. His do the job is currently the issue of a major solo clearly show which inaugurated V-A-C’s GES-2 House of Culture in Moscow. Other recent solo exhibitions and performances have been held at the Kunstmuseum Stuttgart, Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, Barbican Artwork Gallery in London, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Yard in Washington DC, Reykjavík Artwork Museum, Palais de Tokyo in Paris, and New Museum in New York. The artist acquired the 2019 Ars Fennica Award, and was the recipient of the 2015 Artes Mundi’s Derek Williams Have confidence in Obtain Award, and Performa’s 2011 Malcolm McLaren Award. In 2009, Kjartansson represented Iceland at the Venice Biennale, and in 2013 his function was featured at the Biennale’s principal exhibition, The Encyclopedic Palace. Kjartansson was born in 1976 in Reykjavík, and examined at the Iceland Academy of the Arts and The Royal Academy, Stockholm.
About TBA21

TBA21 Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Present-day is a primary intercontinental artwork and advocacy foundation designed in 2002 by the philanthropist and collector Francesca Thyssen-Bornemisza, representing the fourth era of the Thyssen family’s commitment to the arts and public service. The TBA21 Foundation—based in Madrid and Vienna, with positioned jobs in Venice and Cordoba—stewards the TBA21 Assortment and its outreach pursuits, which include things like exhibitions, fellowships, residencies, instructional and community programming, and coverage interventions. All activity is essentially pushed by artists and the belief in art and society as a provider of social and environmental transformation and improve. TBA21 is constantly extending its advocacy perform by sparking new collaborations throughout the arts, humanities, and sciences, partnering with other exploration and academic businesses, establishments, municipalities, and communities about the globe, proliferating regeneration and treatment.
Emotional Landscapes is the seventh exhibition in a 5-year collaboration involving TBA21 and the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, pursuing most not long ago Claudia Comte’s Soon after Mother nature and Walid Raad’s Cotton Beneath My Toes, and it marks the beginning of TBA21’s twenty-yr anniversary celebrations.