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
Waterless drypoint etchings, offset, 20 x 28 cm (outside), 17 x 24.8 cm (inside), 40 pp, ed: 180

Tomorrow is about the act of flipping 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 photog­raphy 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 publication, Berlin/Brussels, 2011
Book: photocopy, screen print (cover), 18.5 x 28.5 cm; video: 6’ 20’’ (w/ sound)

Tomorrow video (YouTube)
The Book in Intermediary Form (PDF)

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 video Neither Nor, 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, 472 pp;
video: 3’ 50’’ (w/ sound)

Neither Nor video (YouTube)

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/Brussels, 2005/2011
Grey marker, screen print (cover), 13 x 12.7 cm, 120 pp, ed: 9 + 1 model

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.

Exhibition 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)

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.

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

www.this-week.org

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, Brussels, 2008
Black marker and lettepress (cover), 20 x 28 cm, 2 books, each 232 pp, w/ slipcase, ed: 4

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 publication contains an analytical 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

‘… 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

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.

Exhibition publication, Amsterdam, 2005
Photocopy and screen print (cover), 27.5 x 12 cm, 106 pp, ed: 40

Thread Your Way consists of 75 imaginary walks, each rendered as a distinct thread-like composition that brings to mind routes, maps, and knots. As a sequence, the drawings portray an entangling and disentan­gling of the same basic form, which, toward the end of the book, resolves into a single, more-or-less straight line. A large print, titled Atlas, shows the 75 routes in a composite map.

Artist’s book, Amsterdam, 2005
Photocopy and screen print (cover), 20 x 14 cm, 154 pp, ed: 6 + 1 print

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

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

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.

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’ 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

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

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 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