COPENHAGEN — Take the long train north from Copenhagen to the small town of Humlebæk and walk a few minutes to the Øresund Sound, and you will find yourself at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, one of the most important museums and most popular in Scandinavia. Just outside is what looks like a marble column, with a flame at the top. Look closer and you will find that the flame is static. Knock on the column and you will realize that it is wooden. This monumental room outside this monumental museum is an illusion. You could call it an “epic waste of love and understanding”, as chiseled on the spine.
The installation refers to an argument between the artist, Ragnar Kjartansson, and his wife. It is also the name of Epic waste of love and understanding, the first Scandinavian retrospective of the popular Icelandic artist, which opened at the museum this month. The show plays with power, humor, repetition and self-effacement, sometimes looking outward at world leaders and other times looking at the absurdities of a superstar entertainer’s life.
At the entrance to the exhibit is an array of hundreds of white and blue porcelain salt and pepper shakers. “Guilt and fear are kind of the essence of everything,” Kjartansson noted during the press preview, alongside curator Tine Colstrup, while pointing to Western appropriation of Chinese porcelain styles. And yet, for me, emotions make life interesting, when watered with care.
These and other emotions come through in “Terrible, Terrible”, a recreation of two attempts to disfigure “Ivan the Terrible and his son Ivan on November 16, 1581” by Ukrainian painter Ilya Repin. Considered by some to misrepresent the Tsar and his story in how he is depicted killing his son, Ivan Ivanovich, the painting was raided in 1913 and again in 2018. The videos feature the two moments side by side, moving from a silent meditation on painting to a sudden outburst of violence, resistance and a reminder that art can have enormous political power.
Much of Kjartansson’s work combines dry humor with a sobering examination of power and violence. “Hitler’s Loge” is a sculpture made from a Führerloge, or audience box, built by Hitler for use in theaters and sports halls. The sculpture is a series of flat planks, at the end, but they are notable for their former owners – one a pop star and the other a genocidaire. In 2006, shortly before the financial collapse, Icelandic investors were buying up properties across Europe, and Icelandic pop star Helgi Björns bought a theater in Berlin, which contained such a Führerloge. A marble slab explains the story: JEG RINGEDE TIL HELGI BJÖRNS HAN OVERBRAGTE MIG HITLERS LOGE RAGNAR KJARTANSSON 2006. (“I called Helgi Björns. He provided me with Hitler’s lodge, Ragnar Kjartansson 2006.”)
The show also includes “Bangemand” (Scaredman), a new performance in which a man in a tuxedo strides along a ledge in fear, as well as Kjartansson’s best-known work, “The Visitors”, a video by 2012 which meditates on the loss. . The title refers to the latest album by Swedish pop group ABBA and features musicians in separate rooms of an upstate New York mansion performing a song by Ásdís Sif Gunnarsdóttir, Kjartansson’s ex-wife.
While these works will undoubtedly command the most attention, I found myself drawn to a small side gallery, where I came across “Me and My Mother”, a series of videos in which Kjartansson’s mother, the Icelandic actor Gudrún Asmundsdóttir, spits on him. It’s good juicy spit, rich in saliva, guilt, fear, love and understanding. The artist has endured this ritual every five years for the past two decades. I remembered his thoughts on his salt and pepper shakers: “Repeat stuff and then it gets spiritual. That’s what I learned as an altar boy.
After a pause, he added, “I’m not saying I’m a spiritual person.”
An epic waste of love and understanding continues at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art (Gl Strandvej 13, 3050 Humlebæk, Denmark) until October 22. The exhibition was curated by Tine Holstrup.
