A few thoughts on 'Epic Waste of Love and Understanding'
I was visiting my best friend in Copenhagen and as we’re both excited about art, there was no doubt one day was booked for the trip to Humlebaek, to the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art. I always struggle with writing about exhibitions, museums and art in its widest context. Who am I to share my opinion? Does anyone want to know? I’m not sure but I’m treating this as an exercise along my masters studies on curating contemporary arts.
I’d like to start from sharing my impression about the town itself. We took a train from Østerport station and in less than an hour we were in our destination. We have a saying in polish ‘the cattle herd’ for the crowd of people all going in one direction. It felt relatable in this context. It looked a bit like the museum is the only signed place in between many tiny houses. Once we got there it turned out there is the Literature Festival on that day with the q&a talk with Murakami (whose book ‘the wild sheep chase’ I’m currently reading) and it was also the last day of the Georgian painter Pirosmani’s exhibition, who me and my friend got the chance to find out about few years earlier on our backpacking trip to Georgia. As much as it might sound a bit cliché, I do believe in coincidences and I find nostalgic moments of spiritual energy, stars alignment or call it however you wish, quite exciting to be placed in. More less, I felt like this on that day.
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The architecture of the building is breathtaking - modernism, blend with the Scandinavian notion of solitary approach, but with a sense of understanding of the importance of natural materials and lighting. You can literally smell the proximity of sea and feel the tiny salt crystals on your skin. I could talk for hours about this building’s design and the space around, but that’s not why I’m writing this. Trust me or not, Ragnar Kjartansson’s works featured in that space are worth a few minutes of contemplation. So let’s treat it in more of a self-monologue deliberation, rather than review of any kind. The crossover between the disciplines and languages of sensitivity was surprising and beautiful. Not ‘beautiful’ measured in the aesthetics scale, but more in a humane level of understanding and empathy. I really didn’t know, if I should laugh or cry, but I think the mix of these two qualities made me question the essence of what we can call contemporary now. So does the artist, who is taking critical look at the Western culture, exploring themes of love, nostalgia, masculinity, powerlessness and identity by using references to politics, history, sociology and pop culture. I’m not sure which work I would call my favourite, as they all together form this bittersweet story to dive in and forget about your day to day. And I think that’s what I’ve really missed in the art world recently. In between all these ‘immersive ‘experiences, I think someone has forgot that creating new, bigger screens and digital worlds for art is making the experiencing more ordinary (in the context of digitalised reality), and perhaps the way to engage and evoke emotions that we’ve deeply hidden is by getting back to finding different languages of communicating empathy and humane feelings in a more direct form. And I think in the way that is how its beauty is manifesting itself to me - immersion into the realm created by the artist, relating to my own experiences and craving to dive deeper into themes just initiated on the show.
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I’m not going to go through reviewing each room of the exhibition, as it’s quite widely spread across the space, but I will just mention few of my favourite parts. The first room filled with the paintings created by the artist and his friend during Venice Biennale along ‘Mercy’ (2004) video where the artist repeats “Oh why do I keep on hurting you?” was really powerful for me. Use of space, time and viewer as the part of exploration of the chronological order of paintings process making was quite interesting to experience. I liked how ‘raw’ and unfinished these paintings look, but also how well they showed the solitude and some kind of powerlessness felt by many today. The other piece is ‘The Visitors’ (2012), which is nine-channel video with sound representing a group of musicians playing the song in separate rooms of the big mansion. I’m not sure how to describe it but I had to sit down in that space and just exist in there for a good 30 minutes, before I could move on. For some reason it really reminded me of one of these ‘immersive’ exhibitions featuring live versions of the 19th century paintings. But instead of changing the format of already existing art piece, he instead created a new typology that will probably sit somewhere between moving image, sound installation and performance. I felt like other visitors were a bit lost and confused, but in its best possible way. ‘Intrigued’ might be the better word.
The exhibition included many different art forms, feelings and momentums. As much as one might say that solo shows are often not as insightful as other forms of producing exhibition. I really do think that this show was showing a diverse and wide perspective on quite ‘simple’ daily moments and issues and it criticises Western culture in a quite different way that I’ve seen so far.
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I could probably write few more paragraphs about his artworks and the exhibition itself, but that’s not the point. The point is I found “I hope this is not just an epic waste of love and understanding.” extremely interesting and finally something made me stopped in a gallery environment and start to rethink the ways of curating. I really wanted to share my feelings and thoughts to this infinitive digital space. Why does it matter? I still have no idea.
link to the exhibition: https://louisiana.dk/en/exhibition/ragnar-kjartansson/
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I was visiting my best friend in Copenhagen and as we’re both excited about art, there was no doubt one day was booked for the trip to Humlebaek, to the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art. I always struggle with writing about exhibitions, museums and art in its widest context. Who am I to share my opinion? Does anyone want to know? I’m not sure but I’m treating this as an exercise along my masters studies on curating contemporary arts.
I’d like to start from sharing my impression about the town itself. We took a train from Østerport station and in less than an hour we were in our destination. We have a saying in polish ‘the cattle herd’ for the crowd of people all going in one direction. It felt relatable in this context. It looked a bit like the museum is the only signed place in between many tiny houses. Once we got there it turned out there is the Literature Festival on that day with the q&a talk with Murakami (whose book ‘the wild sheep chase’ I’m currently reading) and it was also the last day of the Georgian painter Pirosmani’s exhibition, who me and my friend got the chance to find out about few years earlier on our backpacking trip to Georgia. As much as it might sound a bit cliché, I do believe in coincidences and I find nostalgic moments of spiritual energy, stars alignment or call it however you wish, quite exciting to be placed in. More less, I felt like this on that day.
The architecture of the building is breathtaking - modernism, blend with the Scandinavian notion of solitary approach, but with a sense of understanding of the importance of natural materials and lighting. You can literally smell the proximity of sea and feel the tiny salt crystals on your skin. I could talk for hours about this building’s design and the space around, but that’s not why I’m writing this. Trust me or not, Ragnar Kjartansson’s works featured in that space are worth a few minutes of contemplation. So let’s treat it in more of a self-monologue deliberation, rather than review of any kind. The crossover between the disciplines and languages of sensitivity was surprising and beautiful. Not ‘beautiful’ measured in the aesthetics scale, but more in a humane level of understanding and empathy. I really didn’t know, if I should laugh or cry, but I think the mix of these two qualities made me question the essence of what we can call contemporary now. So does the artist, who is taking critical look at the Western culture, exploring themes of love, nostalgia, masculinity, powerlessness and identity by using references to politics, history, sociology and pop culture. I’m not sure which work I would call my favourite, as they all together form this bittersweet story to dive in and forget about your day to day. And I think that’s what I’ve really missed in the art world recently. In between all these ‘immersive ‘experiences, I think someone has forgot that creating new, bigger screens and digital worlds for art is making the experiencing more ordinary (in the context of digitalised reality), and perhaps the way to engage and evoke emotions that we’ve deeply hidden is by getting back to finding different languages of communicating empathy and humane feelings in a more direct form. And I think in the way that is how its beauty is manifesting itself to me - immersion into the realm created by the artist, relating to my own experiences and craving to dive deeper into themes just initiated on the show.
I’m not going to go through reviewing each room of the exhibition, as it’s quite widely spread across the space, but I will just mention few of my favourite parts. The first room filled with the paintings created by the artist and his friend during Venice Biennale along ‘Mercy’ (2004) video where the artist repeats “Oh why do I keep on hurting you?” was really powerful for me. Use of space, time and viewer as the part of exploration of the chronological order of paintings process making was quite interesting to experience. I liked how ‘raw’ and unfinished these paintings look, but also how well they showed the solitude and some kind of powerlessness felt by many today. The other piece is ‘The Visitors’ (2012), which is nine-channel video with sound representing a group of musicians playing the song in separate rooms of the big mansion. I’m not sure how to describe it but I had to sit down in that space and just exist in there for a good 30 minutes, before I could move on. For some reason it really reminded me of one of these ‘immersive’ exhibitions featuring live versions of the 19th century paintings. But instead of changing the format of already existing art piece, he instead created a new typology that will probably sit somewhere between moving image, sound installation and performance. I felt like other visitors were a bit lost and confused, but in its best possible way. ‘Intrigued’ might be the better word.
The exhibition included many different art forms, feelings and momentums. As much as one might say that solo shows are often not as insightful as other forms of producing exhibition. I really do think that this show was showing a diverse and wide perspective on quite ‘simple’ daily moments and issues and it criticises Western culture in a quite different way that I’ve seen so far.
I could probably write few more paragraphs about his artworks and the exhibition itself, but that’s not the point. The point is I found “I hope this is not just an epic waste of love and understanding.” extremely interesting and finally something made me stopped in a gallery environment and start to rethink the ways of curating. I really wanted to share my feelings and thoughts to this infinitive digital space. Why does it matter? I still have no idea.
link to the exhibition: https://louisiana.dk/en/exhibition/ragnar-kjartansson/
