Ragnar Kjartansson | Fire

Ragnar Kjartansson’s first collaboration with BORCH Editions simultaneously marks his first exposure to the medium of printmaking. It resulted in a suite of twenty-five etchings and seven large-scale woodcuts.
The suite of seven woodcuts depict graphic, bordering on cliché images of flames in red and yellow against a black background. The subject of fire—a universal symbol for the paradox of destruction and creation—runs like a red thread through Kjartansson’s work. His fascination for flames stems from his childhood. ‘As a child I loved to draw flames, I would draw houses and then put them on fire drawing flames in the windows. One could say that early on it was evident that I was either a psychopath or a romantic.’

Ragnar Kjartansson is born in Reykjavík, Iceland, in 1976 and lives and works in Reykjavík.