Israel Lund. Untitled, 2014.

by Israel Lund

Israel Lund is a painter who works recursively. He uses the tools of silkscreen to make images that are defined by the circumstances of their creation—the particular unrepeatable conditions of squeegee pressure, angle, canvas texture, ink viscosity. Its a process of distortion, a kind of hands-on, analog algorithm. Completed canvasses are photographed and fed back into the system to be further degraded and randomized. Photographs of the work of other artists (Daniel Buren’s stripes and Martin Kippenberger’s scribbles) also become raw inputs, distorted and mixed with all the other information bouncing around this feedback loop.

This book can be seen as a catalog of this activity, as it reproduces many of Lund’s paintings. In fact, every page contains three compositions that have been randomly overprinted in the three colors of offset process printing: cyan, magenta, and yellow. Varying the press pressure during printing and randomizing the collation of the pages adds further layers of chaos, making every copy in the edition a unique object. Rather than a static record of past work, the book is a present tense continuation of Lund’s work. Every individual book becomes a single stopping point in his continuing process. It is a living document—as much a primary experience as a reproduction.