Ragnar Kjartansson in conversation with curator Gilles Neiens

‘Every act of artistic creation is a mood. The mood in BORCH’s printmaking studio completely fascinated me. When asked to do a series I visited the premises and fell in love with the staff, the building, the methods, smell and last but not least I fell in love with the lunch.’ — Ragnar Kjartansson

So, Kjartansson set out to do a series of prints immersed in this atmosphere. Kjartansson considers the artistic practice as some kind of performance and now he was performing the calm printmaker, cycling to the studio in Copenhagen with cigar in his mouth.

In the conversation with curator Gilles Neiens, Kjartansson talks about selected prints from the portfolio Repent, a suite of twenty-five etchings, and the seven large-scale woodcuts from the Fire series.

The conversation was recorded at BORCH Gallery, Berlin, 2021 and is supported by Stiftung Kunstfonds and Neustart Kultur.

Gilles Neiens (*1985 in Luxembourg) is a freelance curator and art consultant in Berlin. He studied Modern German Literature and Romance Studies in Freiburg and Madrid. Since 2013, co-founder of the curatorial collective insitu collective and co-curator of international art exhibitions in Vienna, Prague, Luxembourg, and Denmark, amongst others. In 2020 he founded ACCCE.