Embassy Malaysia | BORCH Editions

Per Kirkeby (1938 – 2018), one of the major Danish painters and sculptors of his generation, was also a key figure in contemporary printmaking.

Kirkeby was the first artist to collaborate with Niels Borch Jensen when the latter founded his Copenhagen printmaking studio in 1979. Per Kirkeby’s willingness to test the limits of his craft matched Borch Jensen’s. Together, they began experimenting with color printing and aquatints as well as more ambitious formats, mixing different techniques like etching, woodcut and linocut with multiple layers and colors and à la poupée printing. The foundation for a lifelong working relationship was established.

Kirkeby worked with BORCH Editions from 1979 until 2017. In 2016 and 2017, he created a series of multi-coloured monotyopes and monoprints.

The flickering imagery in Nanna Debois Buhl’s new photogravures depicts matter that is normally too microscopic to grasp, and too foundational to comprehend.

Visualisations of dust grains from meteorites form the basis of her series of four black and white prints titled A Cosmic Roar. These dust grains contain particles that are more than 4.5 billion years old – older than our solar system. The wealth of detail invisible to the eye on the dust grain’s surface is given a new digital entity when read by the microscope and translated by computer software. In the resulting computer-generated 3D model, the meteoritic dust samples appear as black-and-white digital landscapes of stirred waters, peaks, and valleys.

The choice of the medium of photogravure allows Nanna Debois Buhl to visualise this otherwise invisible materiality and three-dimensionality: intaglio prints are made through indentations in a printing plate which are filled with ink and transferred onto paper. The ink sits in thick layers where it is darkest and finer layers where it is lighter. What makes the photogravure print exceptional is its own microcosm of tonalities which isn’t sensed through a screen but in the physical meeting between print and eye. By turning the meteoritic images into photogravures, Nanna Debois Buhl utilizes the inherent tactility of the medium to highlight the tactility of the microscopic particles.

Tal R is known for his ever-expanding universe of images, many of which he finds in everyday life, pop culture, or on his various journeys around the globe.

The process of recycling or sampling material from his own, vast archive has long been characteristic for Tal R’s artistic practice. Using details from his large-scale paintings, the artist allows the viewer to experience the works as if through a magnifying glass, while at the same time creating autonomous new works.

Alexander Tovborg has collaborated with BORCH Editions for over eight years to create three large series of etchings to accompany each of the three books of The Divine Comedy; Inferno, Purgatorio and Paradiso.

This late-medieval poem The Divine Comedy is an early and ongoing influence on Tovborg’s practice. Exiled from the city of Florence, Dante critiqued the Catholic Church with the Comedy’s graphic descriptions of torment that were used by the clergy to control its faithful followers. This critique of power in the name of religion and the absurdity and ingenuity of Dante’s work has inspired Tovborg, who’s practice mirrors the same ambiguity of both feeling connected to the message of religion and the church, and also being in a position of standing outside looking in.

Tovborg’s distinctive and immersive artistic practice encompasses painting, prints, sculpture, installation, and performance. His figurative imagery, ornamental shapes and rich colour combinations are explorations of fundamental human questions that have arisen through religious narratives, mythology and symbols. Through his work he considers how our own grand narratives were formed and how they might change and evolve.

Maria Wæhrens’ artistic impulse stems from those layers of consciousness that elude language and are difficult to grasp through the means of figurative art. She draws from sources that go beyond what is intellectually comprehensible – the body, emotions, and the subconscious – and transfers them into permanent physical manifestations.

Line and brushstroke are of central importance to Wæhrens’ artistic work. They indicate movement and direction, and form the basis of complex, dynamic pictorial spaces which are characterized by the interplay of spontaneous mark-making and carefully considered compositions.

The focus on dynamic lines and brushstrokes that characterizes Maria Wæhrens’ paintings also guided her first intensive exploration of printmaking. For her etchings, she investigated the effect of different printmaking techniques before developing her compositions on copper plates. Simultaneously she experimented with the effect of different colour combinations in her expressive, intuitive compositions in a series of test prints.