Ragnar Kjartansson | VORES KÆRLIGHED

In the few years since his first collaboration with BORCH Editions, Ragnar Kjartansson has built up an extensive portfolio of prints, which testifies to his commitment to the medium.

For some time now, Kjartansson has been toying with the idea of empty billboards in barren landscapes, communicating no information to nobody at all. In his series of three etchings entitled VORES KÆRLIGHED, he tests this idea on copperplates, placing the board in the landscape, knocking it over, only to put it up again in a different spot.

Referencing the cloudy, starry night sky of his watercolours, the barren Icelandic landscape in his etchings is at once frighteningly lonely and strikingly beautiful.

Kjartansson’s prints demonstrate his curiosity about the technical and aesthetic possibilities of printmaking, as well as his ability to translate quintessential components of his artistic practice into the print medium. The principle of working in series is central to the medium of printmaking, and Kjartansson has long been employing this idea in his work across artistic mediums. Permeated by romantic melancholy, his new prints convey Kjartansson’s sense for the comedic potential in tragedy, and his openness for different interpretations of his work.