Fredrik Værslev
All Around Amateur

Fredrik Værslev – All Around Amateur
352 pages. DIMS. Full colour.
Texts by: Ina Blom, Martin Clark, Anne Pontégnie and Steinar Sekkingstad
Published by Bergen Kunsthall, Le Consortium and Sternberg Press, 2016
Price: 390,- NOK

This new artist publication, designed by Fraser Muggeridge studio, has been produced to accompany Fredrik Værselv’s exhibition ‘All Around Amateur’ at Bergen Kunsthall and Le Consortium, Dijon.

Conceived in close collaboration with the artist, it comes in two different versions, each containing a sequence of 1:1 scale images scanned directly from the surfaces of eight of Værslev’s new ‘sunset’ paintings. These monumental, multi-canvas works are made using a rudimentary ‘trolley’ and industrial spray paint, normally employed for marking lines on roads or sports fields. Applied across the huge lengths of canvas, they are based on images of sunsets that the artist has photographed on his iPhone from airplane windows, whilst at the same time evoking various art-historic precedents, from J.M.W Turner to Mark Rothko and Edvard Munch.

Each canvas produces a total of 80 scanned images, reproduced in the book sequentially, left to right, top to bottom. The two versions of contain images of the first four and second four canvases respectively, complementing each other by together comprising the full series of eight paintings, reproduced across 640 full size scans.

Both versions also contain new essays by Ina Blom, Martin Clark and Steinar Sekkingstad, and a new interview with the artist by Anne Pontégnie.