10 — Fabrikbooks: The Artists as Publishers + The Danish Reading Room

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.  Both have used the book format as an essential part of their oeuvre, not only as a way of presenting their art, but also also as a conceptual framework and a way of broadening the scope of their artistic work. Unusually, by founding their own independent publishing house, the artists have taken self-control of the whole process of creating their books – from conceptualization to production and distribution.

Both use photography as their medium; Søndergaard to probe existential themes such as time and timelessness, stasis and flux. Whilst Howalt often challenges the boundaries of photography by reinventing traditional techniques to ask philosophical questions and unveil meaning and beauty in 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 spruce is reproduced 97 times using a variety of antique photographic papers. For Trine Søndergaard’s artwork Borgherre, an ancient variety of Danish apple is depicted in the slow process of decay. For this series Søndergaard picked the apples and photographed them over a period 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 published by Fabrikbooks, 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 show 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.