Ragnar Kjartansson: The Brown Period
The Brown Period is a yearlong exhibition by Ragnar Kjartansson at i8 Grandi. This presentation, which is Kjartansson's sixth solo show at i8, opened on 18 January and will be on view until 18 December 2025. Throughout the year, the artist will exhibit both new and existing works.
The Brown Period is an extended project, intended to be a dive into the realms of the experimental. As i8 Grandi is a short walk from Kjartansson's studio, the artist will treat the gallery as a project space where lucky strikes and failure collides. For the artist, the bass drum in the project space will be new video works and studio shorts, mixing drama, music, and cinematic indulgence. The works on view will continue to change throughout the year as the show evolves.
The fifth installation of The Brown Period features Kjartansson’s Poolside Drawings, a new series of watercolour and ink drawings made this summer in Italy, as well as Kjartansson’s seminal video Mercy from 2004. In 2023, for Kjartansson’s solo exhibition Epic Waste of Love and Understanding at Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, curator Tine Colstrup described Mercy:
Alone with his guitar in front of a video camera, the artist repeats the same question for an hour: “Oh, why do I keep on hurting you?” The question is as simple as it is complex, and Kjartansson leaves it hanging in the air like a trance-inducing mantra, balanced in tension between superficiality and sincerity.
The artist has taken on the role of a classic crooner modelled on figures such as Johnny Cash (1932- 2003) and Elvis Presley (1935-1977), mustering all of the enigmatic spirit of melancholy, guilt and self- absorption found in rich abundance in the country music genre. A dialogue with Western culture’s masculine identity clichés and sensitivity codes – not least as they have been formulated throughout music history – runs as a leitmotif through Kjartansson’s work.
Repetition is one of the methods he employs most frequently. A single, distilled motif is adhered to so that it can be seen and heard and considered again and again. Why do I keep on hurting you?
Spanning far longer than traditional museum or gallery shows, i8 Grandi's programming focuses on concepts of space and time. The sustained duration of the annual format allows artists to consider how time affects their work, and the fluidity encourages audiences to revisit the changing installations. Kjartansson's is the fourth yearlong presentation at i8 Grandi, following exhibitions by Andreas Eriksson in 2024, B. Ingrid Olson in 2023, and Alicja Kwade in 2022.
