![]() ![]() “I thought to myself, am I just a pawn in whitewashing Russia?” he asks. Kjartansson admits mixed feelings toward accepting the largess of Putin allies in a repressive state. The expensive endeavor’s funder is billionaire oligarch Leonid Mikhelson of Russian petrochemical giant Novatek, who is notably little-seen here. GES-2 House of Culture is a shuttered former power plant built in 1907, just a stone’s throw from the Kremlin. Thus edgy yet accessible, with a still-rising international profile (and convenient fascination with all things Russian), he’s a smart choice as key guest contributor in the long-aborning inauguration of a modern art museum. ![]() ![]() While sometimes working in the more traditional idioms of painting or sculpture, he frequently combines forms to offer layered input on subjects as diverse as colonialism, environmental crises and art history itself. The 21st-century artist’s own work is generally of a much more playful nature, its influences encompassing everything from his parents’ film/theater careers and his own ongoing rock band Trabant to video performance art. ![]() The power of art to enflame emotions is illustrated straight off by Kjartansson’s discussion of a famous 19th-century oil by Ilya Repin that depicts mad Ivan the Terrible cradling the body of the son he’s just killed - a controversial canvas over-excited spectators have twice physically attacked. ![]()
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