Icelandic performance artist Ragnar Kjartansson (*1976) will be creating a work for his country’s pavilion at the 2009 Venice Biennale.

The avant-garde as a concept is a theme that runs through Kjartansson’s work; playing with pretense allows him to live out this dated concept. Romantic melancholy and Neo-Baroque pathos characterize his works and reflect on the limits of reality in the lives of contemporary artists. Whether they are performances, installations, or videos, his pieces frequently evoke contradictory emotions, moving through happiness, sorrow, beauty, horror, drama, and comedy. One of his recurrent stylistic tools is repetition, the continual loop. Kjartansson, who studied at the Iceland Academy of Arts, is the youngest artist ever to represent his country at the Biennale.

Exhibition schedule: Pavilion of Iceland / La Biennale di Venezia, Venice, June 7–November 22, 2009  · Hafnarborg - The Hafnarfjördur Center of Culture and Fine Art, Iceland, January 30–March 7, 2010