Ragnar Kjartansson: The End-Rocky Mountains | January 18 – April 20, 2014
Organized by the National Gallery of Canada | Sponsored by núna (now)
Icelandic artist and musician Ragnar Kjartansson (núna (now) alumni, 2006 & 2008) produced The End at the Banff Centre for the Arts in the heart of the Canadian Rockies. Against this sublime backdrop, Kjartansson and fellow Icelandic musician David Thor Jonsson took a series of musical instruments out into the winter cold to jam out a song that hobbles along in fits and starts. Wearing typically “frontier” attire, including fur hats and cowboy boots, the duo parodies notions of the “Wild West” and themes in Icelandic folklore. In his first encounter with the Rockies, Kjartansson whimsically embraces the rugged Canadian landscape with a lighthearted yet sincere search for creative originality. Conjuring age old conceptions of the artist as a romantic, this experimental five projection video offers a blithe poetic commentary on the inspirational power of nature.