Dag Erik ElginMirror Falling from the Wall

In his series „Originals“, Dag Erik Elgin has since 1986 devoted himself, as a re-creating painter, to his own canon of modern painting – subjective, yet by no means unusual. In the works that result he repeats the selected pieces, all of which come from modernism or classical modernism, without aiming, in the copying manner of an art forger, at the highest degree of authenticity. The canvases produced in this way represent a borderline case between complete appropriation and a replica made in order to learn: in them Dag Erik Elgin, as a painter, re-enacts the processes by which the actual originals came into being, and at the same time generates from them an intellectual reflection on the delicate concepts of original and forgery, of painting by one’s own hand and copying by one’s own hand. His „Originals“ are of the highest aesthetic appeal and yet – as forgeries – would not withstand a critical autopsy on the art market, for in material and manufacture they make no secret whatsoever of having come into being in the present. And yet it is painting itself, the insistence on execution by one’s own hand in oil on canvas, that makes the „original“ an original – and this at a time of perfected digital means of appropriation that would far surpass any manual transfer of a painted model. (Uwe Fleckner)