SALT LAKE CITY
January 16 – May 9, 2026
Opening Celebration: Friday, January 16, 2026, 6-9 pm
Love and Squalor takes its name from a short story by JD Salinger, which contrasts innocence with destruction. The title functions as an umbrella between two pieces by Icelandic artist Ragnar Kjartansson, made ten years apart: Scenes from Western Culture: Burning House (2015) and the US Institutional debut of Sunday without Love (2025). Part-performance, part-film, the two works draw heavily on historic paintings of the idyllic pastoral landscape, which is then disrupted—in this case by fire or a hauntingly repeated lullaby.
Blurring the boundaries of mediums is a hallmark of Kjartansson’s practice. As the gallery Luhring Augustine explains, he approaches his “painting practice as performance, likening his films to paintings, and his performances to sculpture.” Music, cinema, painting, poetry, and performance all inform the artist as he interrogates beauty and the sublime. The resulting work evokes a powerful pathos—a stillness, a trance—that holds viewers in their durational experience long after the image fades.
Utah Museum of Contemporary Art
20 S. West Temple
Salt Lake City, UT 84101
801-328-4201
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Categories: Exhibitions | Salt Lake Area Exhibitions
