'The End'

Occupying the palazzo next to Francis Upritchard’s Save Yourself in an uncanny instance of synchronicity, is the Icelandic artist Ragnar Kjartansson’s The End. It seems somehow fitting then, on entering the slightly tumble-down palazzo (which occasionally floods) that there is a strong sense of descent which goes beyond the physical. While low light, amplified water sounds from the canal and uneven stone floors contribute a certain amount, the rest is a result of a certain timelessness generated by Ragnar and Pall’s performance. A protracted boredom or not altogether unpleasant ennui ideally suited to the sinking, crumbling, flaking city.

 

 

The studio

 

 

Ragnar

 

Described as a ‘radical romantic’ (Carlo Sini), Ragnar will spend the entire length of the Biennale painting a portrait of Pall each day as he reads, listens to music, plays the guitar, drinks beer and smokes clad only in a pair of speedos. In homage to the time honoured tradition of the painter in their studio, Ragnar stands in front of an easel, Pall wherever he finds himself. On my second visit this happened to be lounging on the couch, a record on his chest surrounded by empty beer bottles. This would have to be the most, quite literally, laid back pavilion I’ve visited so far. Laid back in a knowing kind of way though and generous in the easy interactions it enables.

Artist and model

 

A theme running throughout Ragnar’s work is the investigation of the image or identity of the artist, whether it be the outmoded smock-wearing painter in the studio or an abstract expressionist painter in white coat, laconic-ferocious expression, cigarette drooping from his lip, which he enacted in his first year of art school. Acts of duration and touches of the absurd also make repeat appearances.

In addition to the artist-and-his-model performance there is a video and sound installation roving over five screens in a curtained off room to the side. In a similarly toned ennui, Ragnar and collaborator, musician David Thor Jonsson, encased in fur clothing, play various instruments on each screen, which feed into a type of folksy-country sound. Each scene is shot against clichéd, overly spectacular backdrops of the Canadian Rocky Mountains in deep snow. The two works exist together in a type of loop distanced by a series of binaries: one is manual the other on digital auto pilot; the height of summer against the depths of winter, but both evince a different strain of extreme.

 

 

In to the Rockies

 

Back in the main space, surrounded by fresh canvases stacked in a corner and completed works also either stacked or hung casually on the walls, Ragnar seems to be warding off the end through repetitive cycles and accumulation, as though this could stand in the face of the inevitable.

 

 

Two works

 

Leading out to the small pier