Ragnar Kjartansson
Repent / Fire
Ragnar Kjartansson, Sólveig Katrín, 2020. From the portfolio Repent © the artist and BORCH Editions, Copenhagen/Berlin
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, Ragnar 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 contrast with this highly self-aware mood, he decided to work with personal images scattered in his notebooks and scratched them onto copper.
Repent (2020), a suite of twenty-five etchings, is a collection of self-contained vignettes; poetic, comical, sometimes absurd scenes combining image and text. Kjartansson collects scribbles and words in a notebook he is carrying with him wherever he goes. In his etchings, he transfers the carefree, spontaneous attitude of his scribbles into permanent traces on copper. These are personal moments transferred into the medium of the multiple.
Ragnar Kjartansson, Sometimes I Don’t Feel So Good, 2020. From the portfolio Repent © the artist and BORCH Editions, Copenhagen/Berlin
Ragnar Kjartansson, My King, 2020. From the portfolio Repent © the artist and BORCH Editions, Copenhagen/Berlin
The seven large-scale woodcuts of the Fire (2020) series depict graphic 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.’
Prints from Ragnar Kjartansson’s Fire series at the BORCH Editions printmaking studio in Copenhagen. © the artist and BORCH Editions Copenhagen / Berlin
Work in progress from Ragnar Kjartansson’s Repent series. Film still from Kunsten at trykke – Kobbertryk by JJ Film. © JJ Film
Ragnar Kjartansson working on one of his etchings from the Repent series at BORCH Editions printmaking studio in Copenhagen. Film still from Kunsten at trykke – Kobbertryk by JJ Film. © JJ Film