ARTBOOK PRESENTS A SPECIAL PROJECT BY ARTIST KATRIN SIGURDARDOTTIR
AT THE ARMORY SHOW, MARCH 8–12, 2012, NEW YORK

Katrin Sigurdardottir's installation focuses on the elemental aspect of ARTBOOK's operation, i.e. the books and their distribution. A two-color image based on one of the artist's works was printed on 28" x 40" archival paper, sliced into bands, and then incorporated into the design of each and every book displayed and sold in the ARTBOOK bookstore.

Wrapped around the base of each book, the segmented prints call to mind "bellybands," commonly used in book merchandising. In Sigurdardottir's installation, however, they serve to delineate space, turn the books into building blocks and act to create a visual pattern across the booth. The original image is not visible as a whole but is instead fragmented and always rendered incomplete. Visitors to the Armory Show who purchase a book will take home with them a piece of the work as an edition.

The Armory Show 2012 highlights contemporary Nordic artists. We are very pleased to have realized this project with Sigurdardottir, who will represent Iceland at the 2013 Venice Biennale.

ARTBOOK has presented artist collaborations at previous Armory Shows, including a bookstore designed by Vito Acconci in 2005 in collaboration with Jeffrey Deitch, and a booth designed by M/M Paris with Hans Ulrich Obrist in 2008.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

In her work, Katrin Sigurdardottir examines distance and memory and their embodiments in architecture, urbanism, cartography and traditional landscape representations. Sometimes there is a mnemonic aspect to the work, i.e. making the work is a process of spatial recall. The places created are frequently based on real places, points of departure, arrival or passage, places as minute at their spatial and temporal distance as the models she make of them. While alluding to real locations, her works question the verity of these places, as well as our account of them.

Sigurdardottir’s work crosses the boundary between perceptual and embodied space. She takes on the uneasy confrontation, when the viewer has to negotiate a new relationship with the miniature, see it as not representing other than itself, a disproportionate constructed object in the full-scale world. “Sigurdardottir’s work reminds us that the production of space is a complex phenomenon, in which perceptual and representational aspects cannot be separated from function or use. A Henri Lefevbre wrote [...] there is a triadic relation between conceived, perceived and lived space. Sigurdardottir works with a representational space that is conceptually used and perceptually lived.” - Giuliana Bruno

Katrin Sigurdardottir was born in Reykjavik, Iceland. In the last 20 years, her works have been shown extensively in Europe, North and South America and are included in numerous public and private collections. She will represent Iceland in the 55th Venice Biennial in 2013. Her most recent solo exhibitions include The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, The Suburban, Chicago, MoMA PS1, New York, Galeria Leme Sao Paulo, Brazil and FRAC Bourgogne, Dijon, France. Among upcoming shows are solo exhibitions at Meessen De Clercq in Brussels and Eleven Rivington in New York.

Katrin has received numerous fellowships and awards, including from the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation, Rema Hort Mann Foundation and The Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, Washington Post, Brooklyn Rail, Art Papers, Die Zeit, Vogue, Surface Magazine, L’Officiel, Modern Painters, Contemporary Magazine, ArtNews, Flash Art and Kunstforum International.

Katrin Sigurdardottir is represented in the US by Eleven Rivington Gallery.

CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 3/5/2012