Ragnar Kjartansson: "The Things You See Before the Curtain Hits the Floor"

Ragnar Kjartansson's solo exhibition, Things You See Before the Curtain Hits the Floor, is on view at Museo Tamayo in Mexico City through March 3, 2024. Marking the artist’s first major solo show in Latin America, the exhibition showcases a broad selection Kjartansson’s iconic video and performance pieces alongside new works, most notably a fire wood-cut out installation produced on site. 

The exhibition title is a reference to the closing lines of “Theatre Impressions,” a poem by Wislawa Szymborska, the 1996 winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature: “But the curtain’s fall is the most uplifting part / the things you see before it hits the floor: / here one hand quickly reaches for a flower, / there another hand picks up a fallen sword.” As with many of Kjartansson’s works, theater is at once simulation and truth.

For more information about the exhibition, please visit the Museo Tamayo website.