Publications :

Mirror falling from the Wall
Editor: Tone Hansen
A monograph published on Dag Erik Elgins work by Snoeck Verlagsgesellschaft GmbH, Cologne 2019
Essays by Uwe Fleckner, Gabriele Knapstein, Øystein Ustvedt, Tone Hansen and Dag Erik Elgin. Texts by Frances Morris and Valeria Schulte-Fischedick
Since 1986, in his Originals series, Dag Erik Elgin has devoted himself as a re-creating painter to his own admittedly subjective, but not unusual, canon of modern painting. In the series he repeats the selected works, all of them Modernist or Classical Modernist, but without pursuing maximum authenticity in the copying manner of an art forger. The resulting canvases are at the boundary between complete appropriation and studying replica; in them, Elgin relives as a painter the processes whereby the actual originals arose, but at the same time uses them to generate an intellectual reflection on the sensitive topics of original and forgery. His Originals are aesthetically attractive, yet—as forgeries—they would not withstand a critical autopsy in the art market, for their materials and manner of production in no way disguise the fact that they have been created in the present. Yet it is the painting itself, the insistence on a personal product in oil on canvas, that makes the Original an original in an age of perfected digital opportunities for appropriation, which would outdo any artisanal transfer. (Excerpt from the essay The Artist as Researcher. A Lexicon of Dag Erik Elgin's Basic Art-Theory Terms by Uwe Fleckner)

Looters, Smugglers and Collectors: Provenance Research and the Market. Edited by Tone Hansen and Ana Maria Bresciani. Authors: Alexander Alberro; Arjun Appadurai, Ana Maria Bresciani, Céline Condorelli, Dag Erik Elgin, Wolfgang Ernst, Uwe Fleckner, Hans Haacke, Tone Hansen, Marianne Heier, Matts Leiderstam, Emmanuelle Polack, Dieter Roelstraete, Ulay. Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, 2015.

Josef Albers: No Tricks, No Twinkling of the Eyes. Edited by Tone Hansen and Milena Hoegsberg presents a reading of Albers' artistic and pedagogic legacy through the lens of contemporary artists, writers and art historians. Selections from Albers' own writings, including classic texts such as "On My Painting," "Color" and "On My Homage to the Square," mingle with essays by well-known Albers scholars Nicholas Fox Weber ("Minimal Means, Maximum Effect") and Jeannette Redensek ("On Josef Albers' Painting Materials and Techniques"); meditations by Norwegian artist Dag Erik Elgin ("Preparing for Painting to Happen"), Eva Diaz ("Jailbreaking Geometric Abstraction") and Doug Ashford ("Dear Josef"); and a collage sequence by Andrea Geyer that pays homage to Albers' prints. A wealth of color reproductions of Albers' paintings, prints and furniture are dispersed throughout the book. The design of this handsome, clothbound volume, by Jeanne Betak, draws on Albers' own typography and design sensibility.

MoDERNISM MACHINE Entering a Site of Production
Editors: Tone Hansen, Dag Erik Elgin
Published by Henie Onstad Kunstsenter 2012
The book accompanies the exhibition project titled MoDERNISM MACHINE.
Contributors: Clémentine Deliss, Bjarne Bare, Theodor Barth, Ina Blom, Victor Boullet, Dag Erik Elgin, Tone Hansen, Milena Hoegsberg, Henrik M. Jahnsen, Maria Lind, Mari Opsahl, Christian Norberg-Schulz.

Dag Erik Elgin: Amor Vacui
Published by Opdahl Gallery
The catalogue accompanies Dag Erik Elgin´s exhibition Amor Vacui, presented at Gallery Opdahl in Stavanger in 2006. As a thematic point of origin for the paintings of Amor Vacui, - and also centred in most of Elgin’s art moreover, is the concept of sinthome. This concept originates from Jacques Lacan’s psychoanalysis, and describes an individual’s indefinable experience of borderlines. In other words, an experience or condition that cannot be explained because it withholds any description. In the apparently simple and monochrome paintings Elgin searches for the inexplicable. Elgin links the concept to his paintings ability to create a state of compact space which: “implies that you can get closer to something, but at the same time not get too close, because then it will vanish (…) it is about a state of mind that appears before you get to the close reading, it is about giving space to the spectator.”

Mirror falling from the Wall: Snoeck Verlagsgesellschaft 2019