Versions is a book consisting of new works by Norwegian artist Vibeke Tandberg that treat and recycle the artist’s earlier works. Tandberg herself describes this as: “being in the middle of a loop. I work with older works, physically, grasp things from the warehouse and recycle them into new works.”
At first glance, the book is a meeting with an artist’s destruction of her own art. Tandberg’s old works are shot into rags, painted over, and paint-balled—books become sculptures, photographs become paintings, and texts are pictures. Reading the destruction of the old through the new, however, becomes meaningless. The new works are not a recognition of the old ones being rejected. It is, rather, a revelation of the pre-existing as something new—a recognition that perhaps everything is in repetition, that even versions have their own version.
Versions is both an overview of where Tandberg stands artistically today and an artist’s book with works made unique to the publication. It also contains newly written texts by Karin Gundersen, Matias Faldbakken, Lars Bang-Larsen, and Peter Amdam.
Vibeke Tandberg is among Norway’s foremost visual artists. She has had a large number of gallery and institution exhibitions at home and abroad. Versions is her fifth monograph and her first book with the art book publisher Teknisk Industri.
— Teknisk Industri
