Ulrike Groos

Ragnar Kjartansson (b. Reykjavík, Iceland, 1976; lives and works in Reykjavík) makes art that amalgamates elements from theater, opera, literature, music, film, visual art, show business, and contemporary pop culture. In his long-duration live performances, in particular, Kjartansson probes the existence of the artist as a figure of genuine creativity, an invention of the Romantic era. Melancholy, world-weariness, and neo-baroque pathos are characteristic devices in the works of the performance artist, sculptor, painter, and musician, who represented Iceland at the 53rd Venice Biennale in 2009, when he was only thirty-three.The Kunstmuseum Stuttgart now mounts Kjartansson's first major solo exhibition in Germany since 2011. Titled Scheize--Liebe--Sehnsucht, it surveys the key thematic complexes in his art, from a series of videos he began in 2000 to new pieces that make their public debut in the show. The publication of the same title documents his artistic position with a comprehensive cross-section of his oeuvre and includes extensive essays by Elisa Schaar, Carolin Wurzbacher, Anne-Kathrin Segler, and Matthias Wagner K. With a foreword by Martin Eyjólfsson and a preface by Ulrike Groos.… (altro)

Catalogue for the exhibition, which is being held more than 20 years after the Gerry Schum exhibition organised by the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam (1979-1980), is the first comprehensive retrospective of one of the most ambitious and complex art projects of the late 1960s and early 1970s. In addition to the two television exhibitions Land Art (1969) and Identifications (1970), this retrospective, initiated by the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, encompasses the first documentary works commissioned from Gerry Schum, and short television interventions, as well as all the works produced by the videogalerie schum (1971-1973). The art works are documented and illustrated by stills of shoots taken by Ursula Wevers. From 1968 to 1972, Ursula Wevers, Gerry Schum's principal associate, played a large part in the productions of the Fernsehgalerie Gerry Schum and the videogalerie schum. The films and videos presented as part of this exhibition, as well as the original documentary material, come for the most part from the private archives of Gerry Schum and Ursula Wevers (Cologne).

The concept of the Fernsehgalerie Gerry Schum (television gallery) was motivated by the idea of finding a way of using the mass medium television for artistic purposes and, consequently, making art more accessible to a wide public. This idea, whose aim was to create works of art specially for television rather than making and presenting documentaries about artists, should be put in the context of the emerging artistic trends of that period, such as conceptual and process art, Land Art, and Arte Povera. These latter aspired to going beyond the limits hitherto imposed by sculpture and painting, both traditional art disciplines. The Fernsehgalerie Gerry Schum was actually involved with radical innovations, the extension of art to the film world in an attempt to find a unity between work and medium, and a redefinition of television as an artistic medium aimed at a mass audience. The private collection would somehow gradually disappear in favour of increased communication with a wider public.

In 1971, after their work with television, Gerry Schum and Ursula Wevers set up the videogalerie schum in Düsseldorf where, until Gerry Schum's death in 1973, video works were produced in collaboration with many international artists. The gallery thus became a forerunner and pioneer in the use of video as a medium of artistic expression.

The exhibition Ready to Shoot - Fernsehgalerie Gerry Schum/ videogalerie Schum, initiated by the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf (14 December 2003 - 14 March 2004) was on view at the Casino Luxembourg from 27 March to 6 June 2004, and at the Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Serravles in Porto (Portugal) from 23 July to 10 October 2004.… (altro)