Ragnar Kjartansson – No Tomorrow (2022)

Louisiana Poster with image from Icelandic artist Ragnar Kjartansson's performance, No Tomorrow (2022), released in connection with Louisiana's solo exhibition in 2023 with the Icelandic artist. Kjartansson (b. 1976) premiered No Tomorrow live in 2017 shortly after Donald Trump's inauguration as president of the United States, while the version here was filmed a few months after Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

It is beautiful, it is hopeful, it is trivial, it is sad. “Oh babe, no tomorrow,” the women sing with both fervor and the utmost obviousness. In the kaleidoscopic guitar ballet, the dancers circle around us in a tight, choreographic composition. The work’s roots in the dance and song film genre are clear. The genre flourished in the United States during the economic depression of the 1930s and again during World War II.

The lyrics are a collage of sentences from the erotic literature treasure trove in English translations, partly from the short novel, No Tomorrow (Point de Lendemain, 1777) by the French author Vivant Denon (1747-1825), and partly from the ancient poet, Sappho (610-570 BCE).

Kjartansson's emotional and political engagement with the world is reflected in his works. They contain his loving, humorous and critical dialogue with Western culture – our self-understanding, successes, clichés, failures, melancholy, confusion, hope and absurdities. Nuanced reflections on masculinity appear in both the work and the exhibition in a thematic range from existential pain to aggressive world politics, which also includes the Danish colonialization of the artist's homeland, Iceland.

The works vibrate ambiguously and precisely between existential and political seriousness and pop lightness. With Kjartansson, one usually has to both cry and laugh. The tension between tragedy and comedy is the artist's signature.

At Louisiana, the exhibition with Ragnar Kjartansson follows on from major presentations by other key figures in the contemporary art field of multimedia practices, where performance, video, sound and other media are combined, such as Marina Abramović, Pipilotti Rist, Mika Rottenberg and Arthur Jafa.