Fabrikbooks: The Artists as Publishers with The Danish Reading Room at ENTER ENTER – a Space for Books

In 2015 the distinguished Danish artists Trine Søndergaard and Nicolai Howalt created the independent publishing house Fabrikbooks to enhance their artistic work within the book format. As an essential part of their oeuvre, both artists have used the book format not only as a way of presenting their art but also as a conceptual framework and a way of broadening the scope of their artistic work. Unusually, by founding their own publishing house, the artists have taken self-control of the whole process of creating their books – from conceptualization to production and distribution.

The artists both use photography as their medium; Søndergaard to probe existential themes such as time and timelessness, stasis and flux. Howalt often challenges the boundaries of photography by reinventing traditional techniques to ask philosophical questions and unveil meaning and beauty in apparently concrete phenomena. The exhibition will present two large-scale visual installations. One based on the book ’Old Tjikko’ by Howalt, in which a single photograph of a 9.500-year-old Norwegian spruce is reproduced 97 times using a variety of antique photographic papers. Old Tjikko lives in a forest which stretches 7000 km from Norway to the Okhotsk Sea in the east, comparable with the Amazon as a green lung of the Earth. For Søndergaard’s artwork ’Borgherre’, an ancient variety of Danish apple is depicted in the slow process of decay. For this series Trine Søndergaard picked the apples and photographed them over the course of a year, always at the same time of day, exploring the transformations enacted by time itself.

Central to the exhibition is the presentation, for the first time in an international context, of the complete collection of books created by Søndergaard and Howalt, including limited special editions and out-of-print titles. These are displayed under vitrines with descriptive texts. Copies of in-print titles will be available in the adjoining reading room

Included in the exhibition are two films made for Denmark’s Louisiana Channel in which the artists reflect on aspects of their work. Søndergaard’s Exploring Emptiness from Within and Howalt’s What We Become.

In ‘The Danish Reading Room’ the theme will be extended to approximately fifty recently published art and design titles produced by Danish independent presses, many of which have never received international distribution. These books will be available for perusal in a comfortable setting. Reference will be made to relevant Danish graphic designers, and to the iconic Narayana Press who printed the majority of the books. A list of independent Danish and local booksellers will be provided for eventual purchases.

The exhibition will be open Fri-Sat-Sun 13.00-17.00 or by appointment via info@enter-enter.nl.

Opening Friday 17 June 16.00-18.00 in the presence of the artists.

”Meet the Artists” Saturday 18 June 15.00 (limited space – please reserve)

  • ENTER ENTER
  • Nieuwe Herengracht 11A
    1011RK Amsterdam
  • Jun. 17, 2022 – Jun. 17, 2022

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