Icelandic artist Ragnar Kjartansson, who represented Iceland at the 2009 Venice Biennale, opened his first solo American museum exhibition, “Song”, in the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburg, PA, yesterday.

“Song” (2011) by Ragnar Kjartansson.

The exhibition includes a site-specific, long-duration live performance in the museum’s Hall of Sculpture featuring Kjartansson’s nieces, sisters Ragnheidur Harpa, Rakel Mjöll and Íris María Leifsdóttir.

They will reside in the Hall of Sculpture for three weeks, repeatedly singing a short song that the artist wrote based on a slightly misremembered phrase from an Allen Ginsberg poem, a press release states.

 “My work often is about this ethic of ‘pretense’,” said Kjartansson. “That’s my field of interest—the friction between pretending and doing; pretense and reality at the same time. It’s a constant struggle between truth and lies, and between tongue-in-cheek and deadly serious.”

“Song” is the 66th installment in Carnegie Museum of Art’s Forum series, dedicated to presenting the work of contemporary artists. This exhibition is organized by Dan Byers, associate curator of contemporary art.

The exhibition runs through September 4, 2011.