Ragnar Kjartansson | Realms of the Real

Watch Art21's newest episode, Realms of the Real with Ragnar Kjartansson, as part of the Art in the Twenty–First Century series. 

Music echoes throughout a greenhouse in Iceland as artist Ragnar Kjartansson and a crew of close friends and long-time collaborators film his latest project, a performance set inside Europe’s oldest banana plantation. The eccentricity of the location is typical of Kjartansson’s singularly playful and intuitive approach, balancing humor, absurdity, and pathos in ambitious works that transform the mundane into the profound. The artist has created an hour-long, nine-channel video installation featuring eight musicians, a series of works with his mother created over the course of twenty-five years, a six-month-long performance during the Venice Biennale where he painted 144 portraits of his friend wearing a Speedo, and more. This documentary short follows Kjartansson as he describes his unique path to becoming an artist, reflects on decades of work in performance, film, painting, and music, and creates a new work, A Boy and a Girl and a Bush and a Bird (2025). “For me, being an artist is a way to live life creating moments,” says the artist. “You meet your friends, and you play, and you try to create a situation that’s magical.”

This film was directed by Stephanie Wang-Breal, produced by Nan Sandle, edited by Colin Nusbaum, and photographed by James Fideler.