Solo show
Ragnar Kjartansson: The Visitors
5 Nov 2022 — 2 Jan 2024 at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
· San Francisco
Ragnar Kjartansson: The Visitors brings one of the most celebrated video installations of the 21st century to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Created in 2012, The Visitors is a nine-channel work filmed at Rokeby Farm, a historic estate in New York's Hudson Valley, in which musicians perform simultaneously in separate rooms of a crumbling mansion.
Each screen captures a different performer — guitar, piano, accordion, cello, and more — playing together yet apart, united by a single, mournful song drawn from a poem by Kjartansson's former wife, Ásdís Sif Gunnarsdóttir. The effect is both intimate and overwhelming, drawing the viewer into a slow, cumulative emotional crescendo that builds over the course of nearly an hour.
Kjartansson, one of Iceland's most internationally recognized artists, works at the intersection of performance, music, and video to explore themes of melancholy, endurance, and human connection. The Visitors is widely regarded as his masterpiece, and its presentation at SFMOMA from 2022 to 2024 offers Bay Area audiences a rare opportunity to experience the work in its full, enveloping form.
Each screen captures a different performer — guitar, piano, accordion, cello, and more — playing together yet apart, united by a single, mournful song drawn from a poem by Kjartansson's former wife, Ásdís Sif Gunnarsdóttir. The effect is both intimate and overwhelming, drawing the viewer into a slow, cumulative emotional crescendo that builds over the course of nearly an hour.
Kjartansson, one of Iceland's most internationally recognized artists, works at the intersection of performance, music, and video to explore themes of melancholy, endurance, and human connection. The Visitors is widely regarded as his masterpiece, and its presentation at SFMOMA from 2022 to 2024 offers Bay Area audiences a rare opportunity to experience the work in its full, enveloping form.
About the artist
Ragnar Kjartansson
1976
Ragnar Kjartansson is an Icelandic contemporary artist who engages multiple artistic mediums, creating video installations, performances, drawings, and paintings that draw upon myriad historical and cultural references. An underlying pathos and irony connect his works, with each deeply influenced…
About the artist →About the venue
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
· San Francisco
The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) is a modern and contemporary art museum and nonprofit organization located in San Francisco, California. SFMOMA was the first museum on the West Coast devoted solely to 20th-century art, and has built an internationally recognized collection with over…
