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 opening presentation debuts a new two-channel video by the artist, A Boy and a Girl and a Bush and a Bird (2025), filmed and recorded at a banana plantation in Hveragerði, Iceland. When it was built in 1951, it was the pride of the new Icelandic republic, which was fresh from Danish rule bent on turning its hostile nature into a land of fruit and swimming pools. As the story goes, on Winston Churchill's 80th birthday, friendly countries would send this great man local delicacies. The Icelandic government sent Churchill bananas from this plantation to enjoy for dessert. This was Iceland's new identity: bananas.
A Boy and a Girl and a Bush and a Bird features Kjartansson and his longtime collaborator Davíð Þór Jónsson. Two men play a small opus of longing in this rundown, but still tropically functioning plantation on a freezing winter day in Iceland. The music was written by Kjartansson and Jónsson to a collage of quotes from a letter by writer Anne Carson. Four options for a chorus, as the poet put it, the quotes range from Franz Kafka to Yoruba funeral songs.
Before now I have been
A boy and a girl and a bush and a bird
And languageless fish in the sea
(Empedokles)
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.
