Performance as Sculpture

Reykjavik Art Museum, Iceland

Featuring artists Ragnar Kjartansson and Theaster Gates, with Markús Þór Andrésson, curator of Reykjavik Art Museum, moderating.

Artists Ragnar Kjartansson and Theaster Gates discuss the role that performance plays in their respective practices in a Nasher PrizeDialogues talk in Reykjavik, Iceland.

Markús Þór Andrésson: So, Theaster Gates, born in Chicago, studied urban planning before turning to pottery and developing his artistic career. He merges this background in everything he does today, creating objects and installations of found material and transforming the raw material of urban neighborhoods into active and relevant cultural hubs within the community.

Ragnar Kjartansson was born here in Reykjavik, where he studied art and household management. Kjartansson draws on the entire “act of art” in his performative practice. The history of film, music, theater, visual culture, and literature find their way into his video installations, durational performances, drawing, and painting. So, welcome to “Painting and Pottery”!

A wonderful evening on these old beautiful crafts. Humble acts, but yet, rich artistic mediums. But I thought it would be great to start with this. Where have we come from painting and pottery in your cases? Theaster, it would be lovely to hear, you started in this craftsmanship, you still work with it and think a lot about the day. But in this period, since you started working with this simple material, to what you are doing now, these huge megalomaniac projects, which are such a vast way from this origin, is pottery still relevant? How do the two connect? And was this something you saw already, when you started making pots, that this was a material you could expand into this new domain?

Theaster Gates: In some ways. Whatever I’m making today … I don’t know what I’m making today. But whatever it’s evolved into, it feels like there was something in the philosophy of “craft” that got me here. So in a way, when you spend a long time with a material, you either fall in love with the material, or you fall in love with what the material teaches you. I think I fell in love with what clay was teaching me. So I don’t mind saying I’m a potter. I like it. In a way, because I feel like all the things that happened as a result of clay, they feel so rich and so beautiful.

Ragnar Kjartansson: Yeah, I think I more wanted to do painting because I just liked the idea of painting. Somehow, it was more like I liked the idea of being an artist, just the mood of it. And that was what drew me in, and also just the idea of the smell of paint and the material of paint. And also, yeah, kind of how hopeless it was.

MA: How so?

RK: I really felt like painting was a hopeless thing. After, you know, after Modernism.

TG: Was painting hopeless or were you hopeless?

RK: Well yeah, I think I was just hopeless … You know, I was just young. But that actually gave me this idea to kind of, like, pretend to paint. Then I felt free. Then I just pretended to be this painter and I just continued to pretend to be an artist. I also think I don’t come from material, really. I kind of come from pretense.

TG: Yeah. No, that’s great. The other day some people were at my studio videotaping me. And they were like, “Well, we need you to make a pot. Because nobody really believes you know how to make a pot, you just talk about making pots all the time.” So these people came to my studio and they had some big cameras. It was like, lighting and there was like, 17 of them and they had these huge cameras. And I was wedging [the clay] and they were saying things in these little like, [quietly mumbles] “Yeah, you gotta come over there so we can…[trails off] Yeah, we gotta, it’s good…[trails off] Yeah, go wide then come in closer. Yeah, that’s right, stay there.” And I was wedging. And they were like, “Uh, yeah, Theaster, stay there! [hushed] Okay, now if you could just elevate…[trails off] He’s just like, wedging …” And then somebody said, “That looks good.” And then I kind of put a little extra into it! [laughter]

Ragnar Kjartansson and Theaster Gates

Photo: Nan Coulter

Read the rest of the talk below!