In Forest Gate the author explores the traces that enable a painting practice influenced by photography, writing, the materiality of paint, and informal gestures. These traces are accompanied by a short story that tells the account of a character Piotr, who visits a mysteriously destroyed town called Forest Gate. This place proves impossible to comprehend visually. In combination, the essay and the works reproduced here question how the author searches for an ordered image in terms of materi­ality, framing and composi­tion. The publi­ca­tion’s text and images inves­tigate the potential autonomy of what may seem like a catalogue. Designed by Louis Lüthi.

Artist’s publication, 1001 Publishers / Lectoraat Art & Public Space, Amsterdam, 2013
Offset, 20 x 28 cm, 56 pp, ed: 400
ISBN 978-90-71346-42-2

www.uitgeverij1001.nl

Off the Map brings together different types of ephemera: wrap­pers, receipts, news­paper articles, draw­ings, and fragments of writing. This publi­cation serves as a model to an exhibi­tion of the same name which ran at Motto Berlin in 2013. Its material is related to the layered vitrine-decors which were shown in the courtyard. The layered material is part of an ongoing work-in-progress and plays with the con­densa­tion and expan­sion of the reproduced items which were on display. The publica­tion’s essay ‘The Landscape of Things’ by Matthias Weichelt portrays the items as heaps of material in an unknown territory. A special edition accompanies the book.

Artist’s publication, Motto Books, Berlin, 2013
Offset, 21 x 29.7 cm, 28 pp, ed: 800 / special edition: 30
ISBN 978-2-940524-08-2

www.mottodistribution.com

Neither Nor is a sketchbook that collects scribbles, marks and traces made over the period of one year, drawings that could be considered as registrations of the drawer’s state of mind at the time. The difference and repetition of gestures create typologies while the title alludes to the transitive form of the drawings. In the second version of the book, different sections of colored paper divide the different motifs into different sequences. In the video, the image is accompanied by aleatory music played on an organ, creating a somber atmosphere. Video made in collaboration with Hanne Lippard.

Artist’s book and video, Maastricht/Berlin, 2005/2011
Book: pencil, screen print (cover), 18.5 x 24.5 cm, ca 400 pp;
video: 3’ 50’’ (w/ sound), ed: 1 + 1 a.p.

Neither Nor video

The result of leading a workshop about artist’s books at the Academy of Arts in Kiel, Hope to Hear from You is a collaborative publication about phishing scams. Participants made text-based drawings inspired by a collection of misleading emails from pseudonyms such as David Jones and Laaibah Justin Yak. These drawings were etched directly into the offset printing plates that were used to produce the book, thereby empha­sizing the tension between authorship and dissemination. Participating students were Geela Eden, Johannes Markus Frerichs, Martha Gloyer, Ada Grull, Alice Kuczminski, Alexander Kurzhöfer, Marc André Offenhammer, Gönül Salgin, Hagen Verleger and Marina Veselova.

Artist’s book, Kiel, 2011
Drypoint etchings, waterless offset, 20 x 28 cm (outside), 17 x 24.8 cm (inside), 40 pp, ed: 180

Tomorrow is about the act of flipping and traveling through a photography book. Flip­ping through a book is an abstraction of that book in terms of moving images. The artists tried to question the definition of an artist’s book by presenting a book and investigating its qualities through the medium of video: the sound of turning a page, the snapshots in the book and the representation of the book as an image, the element of chance when flipping from page to page. Tomorrow is accompanied by the text ‘The Book in Intermediary Form’ published by Wintertuin. Made in collaboration with Hanne Lippard.

Audiovisual artist’s book, Berlin/Brussels, 2011
Video: 6’ 20’’ (w/ sound); book: photocopy, screen print (cover), 18.5 x 28.5 cm

Tomorrow video
The Book in Intermediary Form (PDF)

This squarish book, the title of which both describes the act of making it and calls attention to a well-worn idiom, is the result of making points and allowing a grey marker to seep through a page and onto the following pages. Each book follows it’s own systematic of point making.

Artist’s book, Amsterdam, 2005
Grey marker, screen print (cover), 13 x 12.7 cm, 120 pp, ed: 1 model
Artist’s book, Brussels, 2011, ed: 9

Land Route is a companion volume to the permanent installation, consisting of a large wall drawing (reproduced on the dust jacket) and a video, that was made for the new reception room at the Museum of Literature in The Hague. A selection of the drawings, sketches, and writings that led to the conception and production of the wall drawing are included, as are stills from the video Psychography, which shows the writing of a series of text-like forms in reverse, a text by Louis Lüthi called ‘Compass Rose’, and documents from the museum’s archive. Designed by Louis Lüthi.

Artist’s publication, Atelier Rijksbouwmeester, The Hague, 2010
Offset, 19 x 27 cm, 48 pp, ed: 700
ISBN 978-90-73525-46-7

Land Route texts (PDF)

The imagery used in Muffin Moments is taken from various film genres (action, adventure, drama, New Wave) and TV shows and presented within the cut-out frames of an issue of the Belgian comic strip Suske & Wiske. The comic’s speech bubbles, however, remain in place, and now and then a character named Muffin makes an appearance, a reference to Suske’s doll of the same name. The combination of film stills and speech bubbles creates a new, obscure narrative. Published by This Week.

Artist’s newspaper, Amsterdam/Munich, 2009
Offset, 30 x 41.5 cm, 24 pp, ed: 1500

In Profile there are two segments of green and blue lines drawn vertically, followed by a segment of red lines drawn horizontally. Together, these segments form an irregular and changing grid on the page. A corre­sponding book, entitled Profile II, has a different sequence, showing another order in which each colored segment is subsequently drawn. The procedure of drawing these grids over and over again is an analogy to a color model called RGB (red, green, and blue) most often associated with photography and electronic devices. Like lines of latitude and longitude, these pages map out the colors into a multilayered graphical space.

Artist’s book, Brussels, 2009/2015
Red, green, and blue marker and letterpress (cover), 21 x 30.4 cm, 2 books, each 80 pp, ed: 1 + 2 textiles

Accounted For, 2006 collects 54 train receipts in order to document, in chrono­logical order, the trips a railway traveller took in 2006. The blue-and-white pattern found on Belgian Railways tickets is printed offset over photocopies of one year’s worth of travel expenses (the individual receipts record the date and destination of each trip), thus giving the impression of continuous movement. Accounted For, 2006 was printed in down­town Lima, Peru in 2009, some three years after the train trips actually took place.

Artist’s book, Lima/Brussels, 2009
Offset, photocopy, screen print (cover), 20 x 13.5 cm, 108 pp, ed: 25 + 5 a.p.

Thing Chose Ding Cosa is a visual inventory of everyday objects, an investigation into their shape and function. The artists registered and documented a set of ‘things’ we have often held and used – a hammer, a tissue, a cup, a pencil, a paper clip, a cable, a glass, etc. – by tracing them, once face up and once face down. Each two-volume book, then, contains approximately 300 outlines, abstractions that constitute a non-verbal vocabulary and that each have the potential to recall to us the form, function, or personal significance of the original object. Made in collaboration with Tine Melzer.

Artist’s book, Amsterdam/Brussels, 2008
Black marker, letterpress (cover), 20 x 28 cm, 2 books, each 232 pp, w/ slipcase, ed: 2 + 2 a.p.

Inventory was published on the occasion of the exhibition of the same name, which was held at Johan Deumens Gallery. Tine Melzer and Kasper Andreasen explored the relation between object, language, and drawing in the context of 10 works, central to which was the artist’s book Thing Ding Chose Cosa, a visual inventory of a set of everyday objects which was compiled by tracing each ‘thing’ twice, that is, once face up and once face down. Inventory brings together images of objects and drawings that were in the show as well as additional documen­tation and source material; in addition, it includes critical texts by Ilse van Rijn and Martin Stokhof, and a visual appendix by Louis Lüthi.

Exhibition publication, Johan Deumens Gallery, Haarlem, 2008
Offset, 20 x 27.5 cm, 44 pp, ed: 500
ISBN 978-90-73974-07-4

Inventory texts (PDF)

At the opening of Speaking of Which, an early visitor walked away, baffled: ‘Grand mystère’, he said. The gallery had been turned into a cabinet of printed curiosities – books, prints, maps, and posters filled the space. The pieces in the show explored what you could call the visualization of language: mapping notation, short­hand forms, the alphabet, graffiti, the vocabulary of painting, missing things, and so on. Speaking of Which contains works in book form related to the pieces that were on display. Among the artists were Geoffrey Garrison, Olivier Foulon, Messieurs Delmotte, John Murphy, Willem Oorebeek, Sketch, Toni Uroda, Felix Weigand. Exhibition and book compiled with Louis Lüthi.

Exhibition publication, Le Comptoir, Liège, 2007
Offset, 15.5 x 23 cm, 48 pp, ed: 300

Speaking of Which texts (PDF)

Time Out is a curatorial project meant as a follow-up to DIY. W139 was renovated in 2004–2006, during which the building was closed to the public. 17 artists were invited to reflect on the history of the building, resulting in a collection of drawings, photographs, sculptures, and texts. It was, essentially, a non-exhibition, a series of works made during the time the space was closed. Time Out documents the various ways in which the space has been trans­formed. Among the artists were Armando Andrade Tudela, Ad de Jong, Maria Barnas, Jean Bernard Koeman, Irene Kopelman, Falke Pisano, Martijn Olie, Johannes Schwartz, Erik Wesselo.

Exhibition publication, W139, Amsterdam, 2007
Offset, 17 x 22 cm, 128 pp, ed: 400
ISBN 978-90-75387-04-9

Time Out texts (PDF)

In Moment’s Notice the narrator reflects on his past and attempts to transform diverse experiences and memories into a continuous visual poem in which the perception of space is a recurring theme. Thus an auto­biographical narrative unfolds that is coherent yet at times disorienting, told from the point of view of someone who is constantly being uprooted. The transparency of the pages reveal a subtle palimpsest and show moments in time that weave together the past, the present, and the future. The poems are accompanied by an afterword by Petra Van der Jeught.

Artist’s publication, Jan van Eyck Academie, Maastricht, 2007
Offset, 10.5 x 29.4 cm, 56 pp, ed: 500 + 10 a.p. (black edition)

Moment’s Notice texts (PDF)
www.janvaneyck.nl

Route Book is an accumulation of printed ephemera that was collected over a period of two years: drawings, notes, maps, architectural plans, etc. It begins with found images of voyages and of medieval maps and ends with an index of sorts focused mainly on printing, archiving, and astronomy. Images and motifs from the author’s previous works are placed in a new context, between wrappers, receipts, instructions, and other pages from books; drawings and collages are juxtaposed with screen-printed and offset-printed pages. A common thread running through these disparate materials is mapping. This massive book could be seen as a journey through cities, countries, con­ti­nents. The print Route Book Spine accompanies the book.

Artist’s book, Amsterdam, 2005
Found printed matter, 21 x 30 cm, ca 1500 pp, ed: 1 + 1 print

Every four years a leap day is added to the calendar as a corrective mea­sure. If this day were to be divided equally among each day over four years, it would result in one extra minute per day. One line in Leap Day corresponds to one minute of one leap day. Therefore, when all the lines are filled in the equivalent of one day has been spent; in other words, it’s February 29th again. Part of an instal­la­tion in the exhibition Amsterdam 2.0. Made in collaboration with Tine Melzer.

Artist’s book, Amsterdam, 2005
Photocopy and screen print (cover), 27.5 x 12 cm, 106 pp, ed: 40

‘… the sense of world’s concreteness, irreducible, immediate, tangible, of something clear and closer to us, of the world, no longer as a journey having constantly to be remade, not as a race without end, a challenge having constantly to be met, not as the one pretext for a despairing acquisitiveness, nor as the illusion of a conquest, but as the rediscovery of a meaning, the perceiving that the earth is a form of writing, a geography of which we had forgotten that we ourselves are the authors.’
– Georges Perec, Species of Spaces

Artist’s book, Brussels, 2006
Blue marker and screen print (cover), 11.7 x 26 cm, 52 pp, ed: 10 + 1 model

In Automatiske Markeringer, the screen-printed drawing on the cover was the starting point for making a series of nearly identical wave-like drawings by hand and therefore performing the same repetitive motion page after page. The typography on the title page can be seen as an analogy for the recurring blue shape in terms of the visual layout, of course, but also of the words themselves, which refer to the self (‘auto-’) and step by step construct the title, which is in Danish, the author’s mother tongue.

Artist’s book, Amsterdam, 2004
Blue marker and screen print (cover), 20 x 29.5 cm, 72 pp, ed: 2 + 1 a.p.

Over a period of six months, the artists engaged in the performative act of drawing grass with the aim of visualizing a linguistic construct. The grass, then, became abstract as well as figurative: it established a border, as it were. The large number of lines that were drawn by hand fore­grounds an ongoing tension between sign and signa­ture; the repetitive rhythm of the strokes suggests an endless ‘writing’ of the land­scape. One set of books was acquired by the Caldic Collection, Rotterdam. Made in collaboration with Tine Melzer.

Artist’s book, Amsterdam, 2005
Green marker and letterpress (cover), 25.8 x 35.5 cm, 2 books, each 250 pp, ed: 3

I Drew Some Names from a Hat is a screen-printed book that brings together drawings by 10 artists. Each contributor was asked to make an original drawing on a piece of film from which the screen prints were then directly made. The contributions include images of landscapes and interiors, portraits, texts, and emblems, and as such they give an overview of contemporary print­making in bookform. Among the contributors were Armando Andrade Tudela, Nathalie Bissig, Tim Braden, Arjan van Helmond, Sarah Infanger, Brede Korsmo, Louis Lüthi, Iwan van’t Spijker. Cover by Will Holder. Initiated by Tine Melzer and produced with Kees Maas.

Artist’s book, Amsterdam, 2005
Screen print, 17 x 24 cm, 32 pp, ed: 150

This pocket-sized book contains images of museum interiors, tourists, and shop windows in Amsterdam. One or more white circles are knocked out of the raster in each one; these correspond to coloured stickers on the back of the book. It is up to the reader whether or not they want to place a sticker on the corresponding image. The stickers function like commen­tary on the images or captions, indi­cat­ing whether one likes the specific thing shown or does not. The screen-printed flaps include simple illustrations by way of instruction.

Artist’s book, Amsterdam, 2004
Photocopy and screen print (cover), 12 x 17 cm, 48 pp, ed: 10

The One Who is Defined resembles a book of perforated coupons: each page is divided in two and on each half the same three-digit number is displayed. On each right-hand page, stereotypes are played with by juxtaposing phrases such as ‘The ones that study’ with ‘Some students’, or ‘The one who is retired’ with ‘Some pensioner’. On each left-hand page there are two identical images: the first pair of images show dots on a map, the last pair show an elderly woman feeding birds. A large drawing based on ‘The one who looks / Some observer’ accompanies the book.

Artist’s book, Amsterdam, 2004
Photocopy and screen print (cover), 12.6 x 5.2 cm, 200 pp, ed: 30 + 1 drawing

Think Straight is an attempt to draw straight lines one after the other across 500 sheets of paper, which were then bound into 10 books of 100 sheets each. Consequently the act of drawing became performative in relation to thinking, as each line is one illustration within a range of possible straight lines; it records what you might call a psycho­geographical space. On the back inside cover is an image of the ‘receipts,’ the marks that were left over on either side of the sheet of paper after repeatedly drawing lines from one end to the other.

Artist’s book, Amsterdam, 2004
Black marker and screen print (cover), 20 x 29 cm, 200 pp, ed: 10

Records of a Place is similar to a passport. The little booklet consists of poetic texts and map projections related to the notion of place which play with ideas on orientation and noting down memories. The inside cover states: ‘This booklet offers you variables to reconstruct and document a situation. This is a plan for the past’. Not only does the booklet allow the reader to record places and situations – it lets one reflect on the geography of traveling. It was meant to accom­pany an exhibition of photographs by Tudor Bratu at the Vishal, Haarlem. The centerfold is stamped with the text ‘At One Place at a Time’.

Artist’s book, Amsterdam, 2004
Photocopy and screen print, 10.2 x 14 cm, 16 pp (w/ flaps), ed: approx. 50

Stick to your Task documents a temporary installation. In the fall of 2003, an intervention in the space of the Jan van Eyck Academie in Maastricht was performed by attaching and connecting tables as well as various objects by literally drawing tape between them. In the book, the pieces of tape also function as a metaphor for the illustrated line and a way of recording poetic texts. The booklet’s texts refer to how the documentation of a work can be a work in itself. The back cover states: ‘The location of this intervention can be restated by removing it from one space and placing it in another…’

Artist’s book, Amsterdam, 2003/2004
Photocopy and screen print, 9.5 x 13.6 cm, 8 pp (w/ flaps), ed: 10 + 3 a.p.

Similar to a calendar, Time Base is a representation of the passage of time. Indeed, its first 52 recto pages can be used as a weekly agenda. The remaining 7 recto pages (in reference to the days of the week) are a compilation of various ideas, words, and tools regarding the measuring of time, including an everlasting calendar and multiple definitions. In the beginning the book resembles an ordinary lined notepad with a column of boxes on the left, but soon this familiar graphic structure breaks apart and it continues to change shape as the year progresses, conveying a more subjective experience of time. Made in collaboration with Tine Melzer.

Artist’s publication, Amsterdam, 2003/2004
Photocopy and screen print (back cover), 14.5 x 20.4 cm, 116 pp, ed: 200

The cover reads: ‘This is a one way ticket. The perspective underlines this point. Whose fault it is, is not considered. When children grow up it is there to teach us about safety.’ Image’s For Reuse is a series of four books – with nearly identical covers – which gather found photographs taken from a range of pedagogical books, cropped images of paintings, political events, war, animals, daily life, etc. Each book is dedicated to a particular teaching subject: biology, art, world history, and cartography.

Artist’s book, Amsterdam, 2003
photocopy and screen print (cover), 15 x 20 cm, 4 books, each 25 pp, ed: 100

DIY is a timeline of the history of the space occupied by W139. In the form of reportage, replete with interviews, maps, and images from the archive, it takes as its starting point the renovation of the gallery space that was proposed in 2003 and from there reflects on the architecture of the building itself and its changing role within the city of Amsterdam over the years. DIY takes the ostensible form of a calendar and in its design and production embodies the ‘do-it-yourself’ ethos that is so character­istic of W139. A fold-out map shows where a series of art objects were buried during a performance held before the previous renovation, in 1991.

Exhibition publication, W139, Amsterdam, 2003
Screen print, 13.6 x 29 cm, 14 pp + map, ed: 300

Black Composition is a conundrum which can’t be solved. In this vacuum packed block, 30 abstract marks are framed by squares of card­board. The marks resemble typographic charac­ters that can be assembled in a com­po­sition. But unlike a puzzle, the tape-like char­ac­ters aren’t derived from a whole but frag­mented in design. Here, assembling a puzzle isn’t a repre­sen­tational question but one of creation. Produced on the occasion of the Prix de Rome in Amsterdam, 2003.

Book object/multiple, Amsterdam, 2003
Screen print, vacuum packaging, 15 x 15 x 10 cm, 36 loose cards, ed: 7 + 1 a.p.

This stencil font, which consists of 43 characters, including numerals and several punctuation marks, was inspired by the lettering on old Danish police cars. A 3D effect is achieved by incorporating drop shadows into the type design. Each character is approximately 6 cm tall, ideal for posters, drawings and sign painting, and can be transferred to a surface by using marker, pen, or spray paint.

Stencil typeface, Amsterdam, 2003
Laser-cut steel, 32.5 x 19.3 x 2 cm, 4 plates, ed: 30

28 Plates of Bourgeois Poetry & 18 Dropped Frames For Some Images of Nowhere, aka Bourgeois Poetry, is a montage publication of comic stencils with an odd literary text. The science fiction-like text is a dreamy denun­ciation of the places that we spend our spare time in. Visually, the frontside of each page presents us with surfaces of ras­tered scraps. On the verso side of each sheet, is a comic including frames and text but without the draw­ings. The empty frames refer to the abstract scraps on the front and suggest that one can cut these out and overlay the stencils with images. The cover is a loose color plate and serves as a do-it-yourself example.

Artist’s book, Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Amsterdam, 2002
Photocopy and color copy, 19 x 24.1 cm, 58 pp, ed: 50