-
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 birdAnd 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.
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.” -
-
The second presentation features two works by Kjartansson, exhibited for the first time in Iceland: ‘Schmerz’ (2022) and ‘Hvad har vi dog gjort for at ha’ det så godt’ (2023) and in both works, Kjartansson and his friend, Icelandic star comedian Saga Garðarsdóttir, repeatedly ask, “What have we done to deserve this?” for hours on end, but with a radically different tone and setting.
-
-
When you enter the gallery you are confronted with Schmerz (2022) or Pain. Kjartansson performs with, Garðarsdóttir and musician Kristín Anna Valtýsdóttir, a single dramatic moment, set in a Bruegel like European fairytale cottage on lake Zurich. It is standard classic opera of absurd pain and anguish contrasted with a beautiful summer’s day in the world’s most perfect and affluent city. The sentence which the man sings or says “Was hab ich gemacht” or “what have I done” is answered with the woman’s “Nein!” or “No!”. A situation of regret and misery affirmed in the most charged of languages, German.
In May 2023, Kjartansson and Garðarsdóttir performed for eleven-hours in a perfectly designed 20th century Scandinavian room, ‘The Brown Period’ overlooking the Øresund strait between Denmark and Sweden. Throughout, the turntable plays a heartwarming old song, “Hver dag er en sjælden gave” (“Every day is a rare gift”, 1939) performed by Icelandic-Danish singer Elsa Sigfúss.
The two play a couple continuously repeating the Danish phrase: “Hvad har vi dog gjort for at ha’ det så godt?” or “What have we done to deserve this?”. Sometimes they just say “Hvad har vi dog gjort”, “What have we done”. The phrase, used by Danes to acknowledge their luck, privilege or thankfulness, is an interesting rarity of expression. In the performance the repetitive question engages elements of situational brutality. An ideal situation in a world of death and misery.
-
-
