• 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.

  • Before now I have been
    A boy and a girl and a bush and a bird 

    And languageless fish in the sea 

    (Empedokles)

    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, the plantation 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.

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    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, with the lyrics derived from a letter by writer Anne Carson that cited diverse compositions from Franz Kafka’s writings to Yoruba funeral songs. As Carson put it, she included “four options for a chorus.”
    • RAGNAR KJARTANSSON, A Boy and a Girl and a Bush and a Bird, 2025
      RAGNAR KJARTANSSON, A Boy and a Girl and a Bush and a Bird, 2025
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  • RAGNAR KJARTANSSON

    RAGNAR KJARTANSSON

    Ragnar Kjartansson engages multiple artistic mediums, creating video installations, performances, drawings, and paintings thatdraw upon myriad historical and cultural references. An underlying pathos and irony connect his works, with each deeply influencedby the comedy and tragedy of classical theater. The artist blurs the distinctions between mediums, approaching his painting practice as performance, likening his films to paintings, and his performances to sculpture. Throughout, Kjartansson conveys an interest in beauty and its banality, and he uses durational, repetitive performance as a form of exploration.
  • i8 Grandi

    i8 Grandi

    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.