Fredrik Værslev – Fenstermalerei
Scenography at an Exhibition
The design of the large-format catalogue of the Norwegian painter Fredrik Værslev accurately mimics the concept of the exhibition it documents. Værslev presented duplicates of the museum’s wooden window frames with their six square sections, which he underlaid with painted colour strips and floral patterns, creating paradoxical views onto wallpaper. The book’s play with the concepts of interior and exterior begins with the cover, which has an endpaper on the outside and reproduces the six-part basic structure of the paintings in orange. The first image section presents between two and eight paintings per double page in a uniform size and within a strict grid. Their arrangement on the individual pages imitates the way they were hung on the walls, as the numerous exhibition views in the second part of the book reveal. The latter are full-bleed single- or double-page spreads alternating with white double pages bearing only the captions, their brightness continuing to play with the theme of windows and light. The book’s first and last pages are glued directly to the cover. The catalogue’s various components combine into a fully fledged scenography, and it appears novel and distinctive even as it evokes memories of historical reference works.
