Artist books and publications
Draumfara Atlas
2018 Artist's book
Published by Flóra, Akureyri, as Pastel 12
Edition of 100, signed and numbered
“Draumfarir” are the journeys taken in sleep. Atlas, holds both its meanings here: the anatomical plate book, and the map.
Each spread is a part of the body. On the right, a nineteenth-century anatomical figure, the nerves of the throat, a flayed hand, a head held open by its own hands. On the left, dream interpretation cut from its source and reset as verse, the lines drifting apart over faint stains the shape of a bruise. Beneath each figure, a dictionary entry in the artist's hand, with the idiom that carries the word into daily speech: “there are good nerves in him” → character.
The subtitle promises illustrations explaining how the subconscious takes on flesh while you sleep. The book keeps that promise more literally than expected.
The Complete Atlas of Astrology
2019 Artist's book, collage and cut text, exposed stab binding ·Self-published with support from the Icelandic Visual Arts Fund and Myndstef
Edition of 50, signed and numbered
Astronomy supplies the pictures. Astrology supplies the words. The book never mentions the difference. Eclipse diagrams, a chart of the vertical distribution of clouds, Antarctic sea maps, the pocked surface of the moon, all lifted from instructional plates that meant to explain something measurable. Onto them: a blue lion standing on the moon in front of Mars, two fish swimming across the Ross Sea, Aquarius kneeling at the base of a blacked-out globe. Each sign gets a facing page of horoscope text cut into strips and reassembled, the lines stepping down the page and drifting right, held together by nothing but the reader's willingness.
konur 30 og brasilískt vax
2009· Artist's book, photopolymer intaglio, hand printed and hand-sewn.
Edition of 15, numbered and signed.
The source is a thread from Barnaland, an Icelandic parenting forum also known as bland.is/ER.is. The question was whether a woman is too old for a Brazilian wax once she passes thirty. A poll went up. Four hundred and two votes came in.
Then the argument started, it was heated. The replies were printed out, cut up and reassembled as poems about to have or not to have pupic hair.
Each page was exposed onto a copper plate through photosensitive film and pulled by hand through the press. Forum posts, printed the way etchings are printed.
Fifteen copies, sewn by hand.
SemSé
2010 Artist's book, offset printed
Edition of 100, signed and numbered
The title is a single Icelandic word made of two: sem sé - an aside, a hesitation mid-sentence, closer to “that is to say” than to any conclusion, can also translate to “therefore”. Written closed up, the second half stands on its own: “sé” which is both to see and to be, in a mood that has not decided yet.
The book holds photographs of sculptural poems from the art pieceof same title. Novels cut into strips along the line of the text, pages splayed open so the sentences fan out sideways and can no longer be read straight through. Marbled endpapers, cloth spines, anchors and sailboats, the covers stay intact while the reading comes apart.
Hreyfiljóð (Motion Poem)
2011 Video, 1 min 36 sec, looped · DVD housed in a handbound book
Edition of 10, signed and numbered
Novels cut into strips along the lines of their text, set spinning. The sentences pass the eye faster than reading allows, legible for an instant, then gone, then back. A poem that only exists while it moves.
The disc is bound into a book made from discarded library books. Marbled boards, cloth spine, and inside, the borrower's slip: “return on time, loan period thirty days”. Several decades overdue.
Kapítulakonseptið (The Chapter Concept)
2016 Artist's book, cut text hand-glued on paper, Japanese stab binding, hardcover.
Edition of 39, signed and numbered
The source was an old novel that was divided into chapters. That division is all the book keeps. Each chapter number survives “V. kapítuli”, “XV. kapítuli” and beneath it, a few lines cut from the hundreds that used to follow. “She leans back; over her flowering lips, and — with her fingers — they grow warm in their frenzy — and their eyes become like evening stillness.” (Rough translation).
The strips are yellowed, lifted from paper that had aged, and pasted onto white sheets that had not. Each copy was cut and glued by hand, sewn in red thread through the spine.
Thirty-nine copies, no two of them identical. The edition is the multiple; the handwork undoes it. Both things are true at once, which is the experiment.
Ósköp
2022 Altered book, redacted with marker
Edition of 45 Signed and numbered.
“Ósköp” means an enormous amount of something, and it also means doom, a fate laid on you that cannot be lifted. Icelandic keeps both in one word.
The source is a book of the same name, left entirely intact. Nothing is cut, nothing is rebound, the page numbers and chapter breaks are where they were. Every line is struck through with black marker, and the words that survive are ringed in red. Read together, from the first page to the last, they make one continuous poem.
Censorship as a way of writing. Nothing added, and a different book underneath
Ljóð á kostnað höfundar (Poems at the Author's Expense)
2011 Altered book, ink and tape on printed poetry collection.
Four copies, each worked by hand
A self-published poetry collection “gefið út á kostnað höfundar” published at the author's own expense, taken apart with a marker and tape. Four copies exist. Each was marked separately, so no two are alike, an edition made of unique objects, which is either a contradiction or the point.
Lífið er skáldlegt
2011 · Altered book, ink on Lífið er skáldlegt by Jóhann Hjálmarsson
Unique
The source is Lífið er skáldlegt (Life Is Poetic), a collection by the Icelandic poet Jóhann Hjálmarsson, published by Iðunn in 1978. The work keeps his title and gives back nothing else. His poems are the ground it stands on, reading them line by line and striking out what was not needed left something different behind.
On the flyleaf his bibliography, eleven collections, 1956 to 1978 is crossed through, and out of the crossings a few titles are ringed and kept: a hook in time, a spoken heart, I have dreamt of them for a long time, new land, new darkness. A list of books turned into a poem.
Black bars, red rings, blue strikes. One copy.
