Ragnar Kjartansson
Ragnar Kjartansson, stills of The Visitors, 2012, nine-channel video with sound, Duration: 64 minutes. Photo: Elísabet Davids.
The High Museum of Art presents The Visitors, the acclaimed video installation by Icelandic artist Ragnar Kjartansson, who is celebrated internationally for his work combining musical, theatrical, and cinematic elements.
The Visitors is a mesmerizing nine-channel sound and video recording featuring performers and musicians playing a composition by Kjartansson and Davíð Þór Jónsson with lyrics from artist Ásdís Sif Gunnarsdóttir.
Although playing together in unison, the performers each occupy separate rooms within a historic forty-three-room mansion on Rokeby Farm, an estate located in upstate New York. The unique visual and audio arrangement creates a layered portrait of the two hundred-year-old home and its inhabitants and poignantly expresses the experiences of love, loss, separation, and reunion.
The installation is accompanied by Postcards to Marguerite, a multipart work that draws a literary parallel to the musical exchange between friends in The Visitors. Featuring 415 postcards the artist sent to Marguerite Steed Hoffman over a period of fourteen months, the work marks a series of prosaic moments alongside significant events of Kjartansson’s life.