Fredrik Værslev: All Around Amateur (Sternberg Press)

Contemporary Norwegian painter Fredrik Vrslev (b. 1979) presents his new series in this deconstructed exhibition catalog/artists book, All Around Amateur. Inspired by sunsets taken with his iPhone, Vrslev re-creates the images on canvas by using a mechanical trolley used for marking lines on roads or sports fields. The rows of applied color are rubbed into the canvas resulting in resonant toned paintings mimicking the glow of the sun. The paintings are installed to create a massive line of shimmering tones recalling the color field paintings of Rothko. The artist book, accompanying the solo exhibition at Bergen Kunsthall, is available as two different versions, each made up of 320 one-to-one digital images scanned from eight of the new sunset paintings and reproduced in the book sequentially, left to right, top to bottom. Full-bleed scans in each volume together reproduce an entire wall of paintings. Following the images are newly commissioned texts by Ina Blom, Martin Clark, and Steinar Sekkingstad plus an interview with artist Anne Pontgnie.