Ragnar Kjartansson: Mercy

Ragnar Kjartansson: Mercy is the Icelandic artist’s first major solo exhibition in Australia. Eight new and recent video and film works combine performance, music and theatrical staging to move between sincerity and irony, beauty and banality.

Kjartansson draws on opera, popular music, cinema, painting and the traditions of performance art. Repetition is central: songs are performed until their emotional meaning shifts, gestures become simultaneously comic and affecting, and familiar cultural roles are stretched through duration.

Works in the exhibition address love, melancholy, masculinity, family and the romantic image of the artist. Across different personae and collaborations, Kjartansson creates situations in which performance gradually reveals unscripted moments of vulnerability and connection.