Frieze London 2023

The images of Tacita Dean’s Telomere 1-4 have their origin in the impressions created by the wear and tear on a square enamelled metal plate used as a ramp by the artist’s gallery in Paris. Dean describes Telomere 1­–4 as a ‘found mark project’, where she traced, copied, and accumulated the scratches over the four prints.

Working with BORCH Editions, the artist has been adding to the prints for over a year, seeing in the marks the potential for other narratives. Using collaged paper cut-outs, screen-printed motifs and colour directly applied onto the plate, Telomere 1–4 have continued to collect history in a way not dissimilar to the enamelled sheet that was their origin.

Tacita Dean made Telomere 1–4 as part of her exhibition Geography Biography for the Pinault Collection at Bourse de Commerce in Paris (24 May 24 – 11 September 2023). Telomere 2 will be on display at Frieze London.

A meditative terrain emerges from Eriksson’s arrangements of coloured surfaces.

The print is titled Risberg, referring to Dalarna in central Sweden. The coniferous forests and large hilly granite terrain that are found in this area have inspired a rich topography of tonalities.

Andreas Eriksson has created a sensuous tactility in this work through sandblasting the copper plates to build a range of soft tonal gradients. The overall combination of multiple subtle colour tones is achieved with several copper plates that make up the final composition.

In the few years since his first collaboration with BORCH Editions, Ragnar Kjartansson has built up an extensive portfolio of prints, which testifies to his commitment to the medium.

Kjartansson’s prints demonstrate his curiosity about the technical and aesthetic possibilities of printmaking, as well as his ability to translate quintessential components of his artistic practice into the print medium. The principle of working in series is central to the medium of printmaking, and Kjartansson has long been employing this idea in his work across artistic mediums. Permeated by romantic melancholy, his new prints convey Kjartansson’s sense for the comedic potential in tragedy, and his openness for different interpretations of his work.

Jockum Nordström’s first collaboration with BORCH Editions consists of eight etchings, five of which form the portfolio The Copenhagen Suite 2023. Nordström’s prints are influenced by his work in the medium of collage. But instead of combining physical material, he draws from an archive of images, memories and fleeting impressions that he collects, selects and reassembles. His prints tell mysterious, melancholic and humorous narratives, offering glimpses into an internal dialogue collaged from the artist’s own lived experience.

Tal R’s collaboration with BORCH Editions spans almost three decades and encompasses a wide range of printmaking techniques, from intimate black-and-white etchings to large-scale multicoloured woodcuts. Considering his productivity and willingness to experiment, it is all the more notable that Weather Report is Tal R’s first exploration of monotypes.

For Weather Report, Tal R painted on PVC sheets which he hand-cut into geometric shapes. The resulting tension between geometric shape and deliberately imperfect edges echoes his signature brushstroke; the motif and its shape enter into an aesthetic dialogue. Re-using the same plates several times, shapes return throughout the series of monotypes with fresh marks and, in some cases, the residue ink of previous monotypes which in printmaking is referred to as a ghost print.

The relation between frame and image is a recurring theme in Tal R’s work; most recently, he has been exploring this relation in a series of paintings referenced in the Weather Report monotypes. Like these paintings, the monotypes depict the felled trees, light and colours of an eye-shaped clearing in a Danish forest. But instead of opening up the pictorial space to convey a sense of vastness and airiness, Tal R narrows the viewer’s field of vision to focus on subtle shapes and colours, as if through a peephole, with the unprinted parts of the sheets pointing to all that remains unseen.

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.

Søndergaard’s images are deceptively simple, offering a quiet repose for the viewer. In Blind Side Søndergaard reveals that which is normally hidden and invites the viewer to focus instead on what lies beneath the adornment. She is interested in untold stories, the hidden and unseen – and in granting these stories visibility and significance.