Frontiers of another nature - Contemporary photographic art from Iceland
&
Ragnar Kjartansson: Endless Longing, Eternal Return

Press preview: August 18, 2011, 11 am

Opening: August 18, 2011, 7 pm

Frontiers of another nature - Contemporary photographic art from Iceland

"Frontiers of Another Nature - Contemporary Photographic Art from Iceland" is a unique selection of emerging and established Icelandic photo-media artists. These artists repeatedly draw from the landscape and environment in their work. Most of the artists are little known in Germany and most of these particular works have never been on view here.

Haraldur Jónsson
From the series TSOYL, 1986-2011
Framed c-prints on paper, 38 x 25 cm
© Haraldur Jónsson

                                           
"Frontiers of Another Nature" examines how the photographic arts are essential to examine individual derivations, which constitute the complexities of Icelanders undeniable relationship to their natural environment. This exhibition will introduce ambiguous environments in which the photographers themselves investigate and build visual narratives around the expanse of land, or the loss of it. Here the landscape often performs as metaphor for desire, alienation, magnificence and awe, tradition, irony and rebellion or achievement and deficit.

Spessi
„The Tree“, 2006
From the series „Location“
framed c-print, 50 x 50 cm
© Spessi

Artists: Bára Kristinsdóttir, Einar Falur Ingólfsson, Haraldur Jónsson, Hrafnkell Sigurðsson, Icelandic Love Corporation, Ingvar Högni Ragnarsson, Katrin Elvarsdóttir, Pétur Thomsen and Spessi.

Curators: Celina Lunsford, Artistic Director, Fotografie Forum Frankfurt and Dr. Christiane Stahl, Director of the Alfred-Ehrhardt-Stiftung in cooperation with Inga Lára Baldvinsdóttir, Curator of Photography, National Museum of Iceland, Reykjavík and María Karen Sigurðardóttir, Director of the Museum for Photography, Reykjavík

The Exhibition is a production of the Fotografie Forum Frankfurt in cooperation with the Frankfurter Kunstverein. It is part of the arts and culture program "Fabulous Iceland - Guest of Honour at the Frankfurt Book Fair 2011".

Ragnar Kjartansson: Endless Longing, Eternal Return

On the occasion of Iceland's invitation as guest country at the Frankfurt Book Fair 2011, the Frankfurter Kunstverein presents the first major solo exhibition in Germany of Ragnar Kjartansson (born 1976). The exhibition comprises more than fifteen video works, image series and installations of the past ten years by the wellknown Icelandic artist and a new sculptural work especially produced for the show at Frankfurter Kunstverein.

Ragnar Kjartansson
„Me and My Mother 2010“, 2010
HD video, 20 min.
Foto/ Photo: Tómas Örn Tómasson
Courtesy of the artist, i8 Gallery, Reykjavik and Luhring Augustine, New York

With a family background in theater, Ragnar Kjartansson follows a multidisciplinary approach, incorporating elements of visual art, music and above all theater in his works. From this emerge happenings, installations, drawings, photographs, and videos. Kjartansson acts in many of his works as a protagonist, entering different roles: He made appearances as a knight, rock star, revolutionary, and even as the incarnation of death. As an artistic genius, obsessed with the search for the ultimate image, he caused quite a sensation at the Venice Biennale of 2009 during a six-month-long continuous performance at the Icelandic Pavilion.

Ragnar Kjartansson
„The Man“, 2010
HD Video, 49 min
Foto/ Photo: Tómas Örn Tómasson
Courtesy of the artist, i8 Gallery, Reykjavik and Luhring Augustine, New York

The use of repetitions, time loops and the related themes of duration and endurance are at the core of Ragnar Kjartansson's work. His works express a feeling of sorrow and distress but also of the beauty, an emotion the artist seeks to reduce to one existential moment. Thus many of Kjartanssons's works are concerned with staging and enduring literary, musical or gestural moments of gripping emotionality and pure expression to the point of exhaustion. Thereby, the artist pushes himself and his audience to physical and psychological limits, suspending them in an ambivalent state of happiness and mourning, beauty and horror, humor and drama.

The exhibition takes place as part of the art and culture program "Fabulous Iceland - Guest of Honour at the Frankfurt Book Fair 2011"

For more information please visit the Frankfurters Kunstvereins Website

For more informaton on events of the art and culture program "Fabulous Iceland - Guest of Honour at the Frankfurt Book Fair 2011" please click here

Image on the front:

Icelandic Love Corporation
From the Series „Mother Earth“, 2005
Diasec prints, 20 x 30 cm
© Icelandic Love Corporation