"Ragnar Kjartansson: Luhring Augustine Tribeca" by Katy Diamond Hamer

“You must learn to live, live without love / Love is not good for you / Stop all this longing, looking at stars / Stay on the ground, hear what I say.” Sung in a steady, unhurried cadence, these lines looped for nineteen minutes and fourteen seconds in Ragnar Kjartansson’s single-channel video Sunday Without Love, 2025. Adapted from a 1996 song by German entertainer Rocko Schamoni and reconfigured with longtime collaborator Davíð Þór Jónsson, the work unfurled with Kjartansson as a guitar-slinging troubadour clad in black slacks, an Yves Klein–blue smock, a white collar, and a flat-crowned black hat, crooning into the open air of a lush summer landscape. Nine fellow performers dotted the landscape around him: The men were identically clad and carried guitars, while the women (all seated) lazed around the lawn in white bonnets, knitted shawls, and full skirts. The whole scene delivered more than a faint whiff of rural kitsch at once advanced and undercut by Kjartansson’s performance. 

Here, musicality operated less as an accompaniment than as a slow-building structure. Kjartansson began to sing alone, but around the five-minute mark, additional performers joined in, layering harmonies over the artist’s falsetto with cello, Celtic harp, and violin, weaving a modest orchestration. Ambient sound—the buzz of a fly outside the frame, a frog’s percussive croak, birds testing the sonic perimeter—drifted in, further enfolding the performance within a bucolic scene. Kjartansson’s vocal repetition, catchy enough to flirt with contemporary folk music, followed a familiar arc: Words lost meaning, sentiment dilated, and whatever romance might have been embedded in the lyrics began to unravel.

Read full article at artforum.com