BORCH Editions

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

Visualisations of dust grains from meteorites form the basis of four black and white photogravures. 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.

Hannah Heilmann’s prints encapsulate a perennial topic of her research-based practice – the cultural history of clothing and the desire-driven economy surrounding it.

In her works Heilmann investigates the subject of clothes from various angles: their formation of identity; as a human necessity; and as an entry point to talk about consumer culture and climate challenges. With a particular fascination of floral dresses by the English brand Laura Ashley, Heilmann points to a fetishization of the past. The focus on these dresses points to the history of postcolonial economy and industrialization: how the history of textile production is intertwined with the history of colonisation.

The owl staring out of the image in Ann Lislegaard’s photogravure Animoid appears at once hyper-realistic and artificial. In fact, it is not a depiction of an existing animal, but an image generated by Artificial Intelligence. Lislegaard created the motif with the help of AI language models. Using text, she prompted software to generate an image. Instead of presenting BORCH Editions’ printmaking studio with a final version of this image, she kept adjusting it during her exchange with the master printers, discussing different versions and integrating their feedback into later versions. During this process, the demands on the system became increasingly complex, until, unable to process the large amount of information, it created glitches and visual imperfections.

The interaction between AI and traditional craftsmanship, with Lislegaard as the mediator, formed the conceptual basis of the project. Instead of simply executing a digitally conceived image in a classic intaglio printing process, she decided to consider the physical realization of the digital image into her creative process from the very beginning. She thus facilitated a feedback-loop between present and past, between disembodied intelligence and physical craftsmanship, between the elusive concept of creativity and its physical manifestation.

The discourse on AI-created art and authenticity is highly topical. At this point in time, artists are operating in a legal vacuum, testing possibilities that may not be available to future generations. Lislegaard references this discourse, however she is rethinking its consequences for the notion of authorship: while the creative impulse remains with her, she is investigating the possibilities of a mutual exchange between her and a system that can access an infinite amount of information and therefore has enormous creative potential.

Marie Rud Rosenzweig takes inspiration from the signature closing sequence of the American animated series Looney Tunes, which has ended every cartoon since the 1930s. In Rosenzweig’s print, she has altered the iconic image to create a non-place that is at once familiar and mysterious. As a physical space, but also as a reflection of a psychological space, it is difficult to get a hold on. A liminal space describes a psychological state where you are on the threshold of something new or a kind of intermediate phase, which can often feel like an unsafe place to be. Anthropologists use the term ‘liminality’ to describe the middle stage in a rite of passage, where one has left the previous but not yet entered the new and defined next stage. It is a state where disorientation and uncertainty prevail.

Liminality is printed from three plates, in a colour arrangement of a rich orange, contrasted with a vivid blue and silvery-grey. The resulting colour palette of Rosenzweig’s print is contradictory and quirky, reflecting Rosenzweig’s intriguing universe.

Danish artist Anna Stahn has created four photogravures for her 2023 solo exhibition Wide-eyed, open in Politikens Forhal, Copenhagen. These prints form part of an installation of work that also includes sculptures, reliefs and drawings.

The text-based print Liste (List), could be an inventory of the exhibition’s imagery, or a cryptic poem listing characters and situations Stahn has encountered, as part of her ongoing investigation into the notion of the naïve in contemporary society.

The characters in Stahn’s universe appear carefree and removed from the problems of contemporary life. They carry drinks, tennis rackets or shopping bags like props. The prints Almindelig ikon (Ordinary icon) and Vinder (Winner) are depictions of contemporary female stereotypes: busy, competitive, urban women engaged in an exuberant, never-ending consumerist act. At the same time, she denies them fully executed, individual faces – they  are anonymous representatives of contemporary society with its naïve clichés rather than individuals making independent choices.

Trine Søndergaard’s photogravure series Blind Side are refined, serene images of what appears to be a totemic minimalist sculpture, captured from different angles. The images actually depict a bonnet stand which she discovered in the collection of the Gudhjem Museum on the island of Bornholm, Denmark. Photographed in black and white and without the usual adornment, the stand becomes a mask-like object to be contemplated in its stillness and austerity.

The deep velvety tonal range of Blind Side is achieved through photogravure, a printmaking technique with a particularly haptic presence and one of the earliest ways of transferring a photographic image onto paper. The prints were conceived for Søndergaard’s 2023 solo exhibition Blind Side at umbrella west coast exhibitions in Nørre Nebel, Denmark.

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.