This year’s ARS FENNICA award has been won by the Icelandic artist Ragnar Kjartansson. The prize is awarded by the Henna and Pertti Niemistö Art Foundation – ARS FENNICA sr. It is worth 40,000 euros and is now being given for the 24th time. The Director of the Museum Tinguely in Basel, Roland Wetzel, chose the prize winner. He explains his decision as follows:
This years’ exhibition by the Ars Fennica candidates at Amos Rex in Helsinki is impressive proof of the cutting-edge, vibrant artistic scene in the Nordic countries, represented by five outstanding artistic positions: Miriam Bäckström, Aurora Reinhard, Petri Ala-Maunus, Ragnar Kjartansson and Egill Saebjörnsson. All of them would have deserved to be selected from the shortlist. Everyone’s specific practice opens up a complex, thoughtful examination of aspects of the world we are living in. Therefore, I would first of all like to thank the artists for their excellent contributions and for the chance to engage in insightful conversations with all of them. I also thank and congratulate the donors of the Ars Fennica award, represented by Leena and Kari Niemistö, and Kai Kartio and his team from Amos Rex for the excellent show they have organized.
My choice for the ARS FENNICA award 2019 tries to recognize the presented artworks in the wider context of their creators’ respective art practices. It is at the same time a personal choice inspired by topics that are dear to me: New forms of reconfiguring established modes of representation, humour and irony in questioning conventions, and the relevance of sound and music as ‘auratic’ aspects in creating specific space-time and collaborative experiences.
I nominate Ragnar Kjartansson for Ars Fennica 2019.
With his presentation of The Boat, one of nine videos from the Scenes from Western Culture series (2015), Kjartansson addresses core subjects of his versatile artistic practice, which centres around topics and interrelations in music and theatre. The idyllic Swiss mountain scenery of The Boat provides the freeze-frame backdrop for an ever-repeating scene of a couple in love arriving at a landing stage. The heteronormative conventionalism and moral uprightness of the plot are emphasized through a seemingly endless loop in slight, chance-driven variations played off to the point of absurdity.
Kjartansson’s attitude to operating as a minimalistic Trickster is at the core of his manifold practice. The way he exposes himself or other actors as fragile personalities challenging failure, and his ambiguous inclination towards nostalgia and romanticism reflect his authentic and empathic oscillation between ‘playing’ and ‘being’. With his pivotal performances and films about music (making), he emphasizes collaborative work and friendship with a twist towards melancholia and meditation, creating this fascinating and irresolvable tension between the sublime and the mundane.
Roland Wetzel, Director of the Museum Tinguely in Basel