Ragnar Kjartansson | Monotypes
Posted 04.09.23In Ragnar Kjartansson’s hands, monotypes become an artistic tool for investigating a visual idea in the form of a series, exploring a theme and its variations to the point of […]
In Ragnar Kjartansson’s hands, monotypes become an artistic tool for investigating a visual idea in the form of a series, exploring a theme and its variations to the point of […]
Ragnar Kjartansson’s woodcut Creative Space is related to his works on privileged 21st century uneasiness like Scandinavian Pain and Scenes from Western Culture. Kjartansson’s prints demonstrate his curiosity about the technical and aesthetic possibilities […]
Søndergaard’s Blind Side photogravures are refined, serene images of what appears to be a totemic minimalist sculpture, captured from different angles
After Inferno (2017-18), a two-year printmaking tour de force that resulted in an extensive portfolio of 37 etchings, Tovborg turned his attention to Purgatory, the second book of Dante Alighieri’s The Divine Comedy – this […]
The barren landscape in Kjartansson’s etchings is at once frighteningly lonely and strikingly beautiful.
The Tacita Dean’s photogravure DANTE accompanies the release of the music score DANTE by Thomas Adès.
Tacita Dean describes Telomere 1–4 as a ‘found mark project’, where she traced, copied, and accumulated the scratches over the four prints. The images of the four pieces that make up Tacita […]
Emma Kohlmann draws on an archive of figures and motives she has developed in her practice as a painter.
In Nordic Design, a series of multi-coloured woodcuts, Idun Baltzersen depicts interior scenes from her own home, populated by the nuclear family that is herself, her partner and their child.
Nordström’s prints tell mysterious, melancholic and humorous narratives, offering glimpses into an internal dialogue collaged from the artist’s own lived experience.
For Meditation Copenhagen, a suite of twelve etchings, Jorinde Voigt limited herself exclusively to the drypoint technique.
The characters in Anna Stahn’s universe appear carefree and removed from the problems of contemporary life.
Fiona Tan’s Technicolor Dreaming photogravures are informed by her interest in early filmmakers’ obsession with colour.
Undulating soft gradients of tone form an intuitive landscape of shadows and colours.
Liminality is a new etching printed from three plates, in a colour arrangement of a rich orange, contrasted with a vivid blue and silvery-grey.
Alexander Tovborg’s portfolio of 37 etchings is inspired by each specific canto (verse) of Inferno, first book of Dante’s Divine Comedy from 1320
BORCH Editions is pleased to publish a series of etchings by Hannah Heilmann. Working with master printer Mette Ulstrup, Heilmann has created a portfolio of five etchings that stem from the artist’s research-based practice. The prints encapsulate a perennial topic of the artist’s research – the cultural history of clothing and the desire-driven economy surrounding it.
Anna Stahn renders a storefront and invites the viewer to go window shopping, perusing the display of garments and underwear.
Milan first initiated The Balcony by creating a suite of eight etchings in 2019, marking the first part of the series. A second suite of eight etchings with the subtitle The World is Made of Eggs, extends the portfolio in 2022.
The figures in the etchings Mademoiselle and Madame stem from Mamma Andersson’s image archive: two women emerge from a former time in an assemblage of backgrounds and textures.
In Adam Jeppesen’s triptych Tyler H, large ominous eyes slowly appear from a scattering of random marks and tones. The large-scale print is related to a series of transitory portraits titled Amos.
Tacita Dean’s print project ‘Antigone (offset),’ 2021, relates to Dean’s hour long 35mm double Cinemascope film work ‘Antigone,’ 2018, which was created for her 2018 exhibition at The Royal Academy in London, and has since travelled to Glyptotek, Copenhagen, and Kunstmuseum Basel.
Anna Stahn’s two etchings Newspaper print and Love letter are based on different ways of communicating messages.
The prints Hound, Jerry, Lady Marion’s Veil and Suggestive kneeling marks the artist’s first collaboration with BORCH Editions.
Tacita Dean’s Expulsion from Paradise is the fourth and final contribution to BORCH Editions’ anniversary series, printed by Niels Borch Jensen.
Tacita Dean’s Inferno, 2021, is a ten-metre print of a mountainous panorama, made in eight parts.
Each of the five prints in the suite Blomster uden titel depict a bouquet of flowers picked by Tal R from around his home in the Danish countryside.
Trine Søndergaard has created a series of six portraits of women whose faces are covered by their draped hair.
Ragnar Kjartansson’s first collaboration with BORCH Editions simultaneously marks his first exposure to the medium of printmaking. It resulted in a suite of twenty-five etchings and seven large-scale woodcuts.
The suite of twenty-five etchings is a collection of self-contained vignettes; poetic, comical, sometimes absurd scenes combining image and text.
In four chromatic large-scale prints Julie Mehretu combines photogravure with classic intaglio printing techniques.
The imagery for Tal R’s Adidas Boy, a suite of 24 woodcuts, is based on a group of bronze sculptures created for his 2020 solo exhibition at Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek in Copenhagen.
Per Kirkeby, the most famous Danish artist of his generation, announced the end of his career as a painter in 2015. His collaboration with BORCH Editions, which dates back as far as 1979, continued nevertheless, and in 2017 he created a series of multi-coloured monoprints in collaboration with master printer Mette Ulstrup.
Wardell Milan’s first collaboration with BORCH Editions resulted in a portfolio of eight etchings entitled The Balcony. In The Balcony Milan explores the absurdity of politics, social and political structures, power dynamics and spectatorship and how these forces effect one’s personal existence.
In : tingsted, a series of six new prints published in an edition of 24, the viewers encounter people Tal R knows personally and objects he has a personal connection to – a male figure, flee market finds like masks and toy animals or a flower vase.
Matt Saunders has been working on an ongoing series of landscape etchings since 2015. Often completed in parallel to his other collaborations with BORCH Editions, the series will ultimately comprise six etchings (in an allusion to Wallace Steven’s poem Six Significant Landscapes).
In celebration of the print studio’s 40th anniversary, BORCH Editions are publishing four prints by four artists who have built comprehensive bodies of printed work in collaboration with the printmaking studio. Tal R’s print Lillen, a combination of woodcut and etching, was printed by master printer Julie Dam.
For her first collaboration with BORCH Editions Mamma Andersson created a suite of three prints, combining woodcut and etching on Japanese paper.
In celebration of the print studio’s 40th anniversary, BORCH Editions will publish four prints by four artists who have built comprehensive bodies of printed work in collaboration with the printmaking studio. The second contribution, Matt Saunders’ etching Marthe in the Garden, is printed by master printer Thomas Jennions.
In celebration of the print studio’s 40th anniversary, BORCH Editions will publish four prints by four artists who have built comprehensive bodies of printed work in collaboration with the printmaking studio. The first contribution, an etching made from two plates by Georg Baselitz, is printed by master printer Mette Ulstrup.
Peter Linde Busk’s universe is a dark underworld inhabited by fabulous figures. He examines the border between abstraction and figuration, referring to literary and mythical as well as contemporary fictional characters.
Duets (2018–2019) is a suite of monotypes created by transferring both sides of watercolors made on linen simultaneously to paper. The prints carry the weave of the fabric as well as the subtle symmetries and asymmetries of front and back.
A strange glow pervades Fiona Tan’s Shadow Archive, illuminating a well-organized collection of endless archival drawers. The starting point for the series of six black-and-white photogravures originates from Tan’s fascination for the Belgian visionary Paul Otlet (1868–1944), and his ambitious idea to catalogue all human knowledge in order to build world peace.
For the aquatints,“I utilized both sugarlift and spitbite aquatints in these prints, creating rich, dense, flat shapes as well as textured surfaces and brushmarks. Then we began to proof them, experimenting with different colored inks, both opaque and transparent. After the initial proof, I began to see the possibilities of working on other plates with the intention of overlaying one on top of the other, playing with combinations of drawing, color and touch.”– Marina Adams
The four prints Fiona Tan created for her first collaboration with BORCH Editions are paired in two. Each pair comprises of an image of the sky above Los Angeles coupled with a print of encrypted hand drawn letters.
Alexander Tovborg’s recent woodcuts and monotypes focus on the myths surrounding the French saint Joan of Arc.
Alexander Tovborg’s recent woodcuts and monotypes focus on the myths surrounding the French saint Joan of Arc. A woodcut is a relief print where areas of the wooden plate’s surface are cut away to reveal the motif. The ink is applied only on the remaining parts of the plate’s surface. Tovborg’s woodcuts are printed from several plates building the image from different layers of color.
John Zurier’s etchings bear witness to his investigative approach to the medium of printmaking. Working on the copper plates he consciously avoided printing techniques which require the use of a brush – his most crucial tool in his artistic practice as a painter.
In John Zurier’s works, seemingly monochromatic surfaces evolve into visual poetry. His language is minimal and at the same time very distinct: linear elements build up space through an interaction of presence and absence.
For : Blå Dør, Tal R worked with indigo, a particularly deep and rich variety of the colour blue.
Thomas Zipp uses photographic material from two of his performances. Some of the works show so-called Rescue Anne dolls, originally invented for reanimation training, and frequently incorporated into Zipp’s performances.
The nine prints Virginia Overton created for her first collaboration with BORCH Editions are, much like her sculptural work, a direct response to her physical presence in a specific space – in this case, the city of Copenhagen and Niels Borch Jensen’s print studio.
“What I like about etching is that it is a mental and physical construction involving both a direct and an indirect process. And there is nothing like an etched line. It carries an authority, presence and weight all its own. Even haphazard incidental lines, random scratches, and the most delicate wavering marks remain with clarity.”
– John Zurier
In the five large-scale prints of his new series Ratlos / Indomitable, Matt Saunders works with portraits of the fictional movie character Leni Peickert, who appears in two films by German director Alexander Kluge.
Thomas Scheibitz’ interest in the print medium encompasses both the complex, time-consuming production process, and the artistic possibilities arising from it.
The large-scale coloured woodcut Spiegel is one of the Tal R’s most ambitious graphic works to date.
With his elaborate drawing skills, Robert McNally creates dense, multi-layered visual universes.
The idea of making a book of summer notes came to me. I thought of it as a book of random visual vignettes, formless with no apparent order, where the pleasure comes from finding the subtle connections and contrasts.
– John Zurier
For Stanely Whitney’s first collaboration with BORCH Editions, he created nine large-scale monotypes.
Knud Odde has experimented with a variety of printing techniques, among them woodcut, aquatint and chine-collé.
For Leochicospeedy, Huma Bhabha has created a series of expressionistic portraits of deities or a race of gods executed in photogravure and etching.
Stanley Whitney’s work is a vibrant statement for the significance of abstraction in contemporary art. In his series of eight black-and-white etchings, he abandons his signature grid in favour of a more investigative style, skilfully exploring the potential of different etching techniques.
Zurier effortlessly translates his artistic practice as a painter from canvas to copper plate to make the very process of printmaking visible: The marks in the plate, executed by brush or needle, become evident; the force with which the paper is pressed into the indentations is almost palpable. The three-dimensionality of ink sitting on paper, the rich texture of the surfaces, the physical material at hand become the topic of a meditation on color and surface.
The title of Huma Bhabha’s series of etchings The Unsubs is inspired by the TV-show Criminal Minds. Here, the artist depicts unknown subjects or entities from an imaginary world, consciously avoiding characterization.
Girl drawing Lily is based on sketches and paintings made over a period of three years. Tal R portrayed women in confined interior spaces.
Danh Vō uses a postcard depicting a small-scale replica of the Statue of Liberty atop a Buddhist temple in Hanoi for his new photogravure.
In Epigraph, Damascus, Julie Mehretu has developed a practice and vocabulary that has allowed her to build deep, dark density, combined with an effortless flow, in a composition that goes far beyond traditional printmaking.
Although Per Kirkeby announced the end of his career as a painter in 2015, his collaboration with our Copenhagen print shop continues.
Iñaki Bonillas’ latest print project is based on photographs, collected by the artist’s grandfather, kept in black letter size pieces of paper and then covered with embracing plastic sleeves.