Ragnar Kjartansson

Kjartansson has been playing with the idea of empty billboards in barren landscapes for some time. Outdoor advertising that provides no information to anyone. In his series of three etchings entitled VORES KÆRLIGHED (OUR LOVE), he has applied this idea to the copper plate. In the series, he places the board in the landscape, knocks it over and then puts it back in a different place.

Referring to the cloudy night sky of his watercolours (of which the artist donated Die Nacht der Hochzeit (2022) to De Pont), the barren Icelandic landscape in his etchings is at once eerily lonely and strikingly beautiful.

Kjartansson's prints demonstrate his curiosity about the technical and aesthetic possibilities of printmaking and his ability to translate essential elements of his artistic practice into printmaking techniques, such as etching, silkscreen and woodcut. The principle of working in series is central to this. His new prints are imbued with romantic melancholy. They show Kjartansson's sense of the comic potential of tragedy and his openness to different interpretations of his work.