Luhring Augustine is pleased to announce Me, My Mother, My Father, and I, a solo exhibition by Ragnar Kjartansson at the New Museum. This marks the first New York museum show by the Icelandic artist.
For the exhibition, Kjartansson will present works with and about his family, including a newly orchestrated performance and video piece entitled Take Me Here by the Dishwasher: Memorial for a Marriage (2011/2014). This work is inspired by a scene in Iceland’s first feature film, Morðsaga (1977), directed by Reynir Oddsson. Kjartansson’s mother Guðrún Ásmundsdóttir plays the main character of the film, who fantasizes about a plumber, played by Kjartansson’s father, Kjartan Ragnarsson, in a sex scene on the kitchen floor. As family legend has it, Kjartansson was conceived the night after the film shoot. Kjartan Sveinsson, composer and a former member of the Icelandic band Sigur Rós, transformed the scene’s dialogue into a ten-part polyphony played by ten musicians. For the duration of the exhibition, the musicians will sing and play guitar live in the tradition of the troubadour to accompany a projection of the original film scene.
Other works in the exhibition are made in collaboration with Kjartansson’s parents, including The Raging Pornographic Sea (2014), a new series of drawings of the sea made with his father, and Me and My Mother, an ongoing video collaboration with his mother in which she repeatedly spits in his face; this work began in 2000 and is documented every five years. This exhibition provides an opportunity to look at the way Kjartansson’s work explores both family ties and delusions of grandeur, as well as to engage with his ongoing interest in the conflation of reality and fantasy.
Me, My Mother, My Father, and I is curated by Massimiliano Gioni, Associate Director and Director of Exhibitions, and Margot Norton, Assistant Curator, and will be accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue featuring an interview with the artist and new reflections on Kjartansson’s practice by Francesco Bonami and Roni Horn.