Ragnar Kjartansson’s Spiritual Satire at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art

COPENHAGEN — Take the long train north of Copenhagen to the small town Humlebæk and walk a few minutes to the Øresund Sound, and you’ll find yourself at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, one of the most important and popular museums in Scandinavia. Just outside is what looks like a marble column, with a flame atop. Look more carefully, and you’ll find that the flame is static. Knock on the column, and you’ll realize it’s made of wood. This monumental piece outside this monumental museum is an illusion. You might call it an “Epic Waste of Love and Understanding,” as chiseled on the column.

The installation references 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 this month at the museum. The show plays with power, humor, repetition, and self-effacement, sometimes looking outward at world leaders and other times looking at the absurdities of the life of a superstar artist.

At the exhibition’s entrance 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 at the press preview, alongside curator Tine Colstrup, while pointing to the Western appropriation of Chinese porcelain styles. And yet, to me, emotions make life interesting, when sprinkled carefully.

These emotions, along with others, show through in “Terrible, Terrible,” a reenactment of two attempts to deface Ukrainian painter Ilya Repin’s “Ivan the Terrible and His Son Ivan on 16 November 1581.” Considered by some to misrepresent the Tsar and his history in the way he is depicted killing his son, Ivan Ivanovich, the painting was attacked in 1913 and once again in 2018. The videos present the two moments side by side, moving from a silent meditation on the painting to a sudden burst of violence, resistance, and a reminder that art can have tremendous 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 venues. The sculpture is a series of flat boards, in the end, but they’re remarkable because of their previous owners — one a pop star and the other a genocider. In 2006, shortly before the financial collapse, Icelandic investors were buying properties across Europe, and Icelandic pop star Helgi Björns bought a theater in Berlin, which contained on such Führerloge. A marble slab explains the history: JEG RINGEDE TIL HELGI BJÖRNS HAN OVERBRAGTE MIG HITLERS LOGE RAGNAR KJARTANSSON 2006. (“I called Helgi Björns. He provided me with Hitler’s loge, Ragnar Kjartansson 2006.”)

The show also includes “Bangemand” (Scaredman), a new performance piece in which a man in a tuxedo inches along a ledge in fear, as well as Kjartansson’s best-known work, “The Visitors,” a 2012 video that meditates on loss. The title refers to the Swedish pop band ABBA’s final album and features musicians in separate rooms in an upstate New York mansion performing a song by Ásdís Sif Gunnarsdóttir, Kjartansson’s ex-wife.

While these works will undoubtedly get the most attention, I found myself drawn to a small side gallery, where I came across “Me and My Mother,” a video series in which Kjartansson’s mother, Icelandic actor Gudrún Asmundsdóttir, spits on him. They’re good, juicy spits, rich with saliva, guilt, fear, love, and understanding. The artist has been enduring this ritual every five years over the past two decades. I was reminded of his reflections on his salt and pepper shakers: “Repeat stuff and then it becomes 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) through October 22. The exhibition was curated by Tine Holstrup.

AX Mina (aka An Xiao Mina) is an author, artist and futures thinker who follows her curiosity. She co-produces Five and Nine, a podcast about magic, work and economic justice. More by AX Mina