A Square on a Sphere

Marte Johnslien works in the borderlands between painting and sculpture, art and science. She continuously produces work and experiments with different technical aspects of her exhibitions until the opening night. We worked with Johnslien to design the catalogue for her exhibition at Lillehammer Art Museum in Norway. Our approach was to focus on the artistic process itself. It felt like the only possible way to present her work in its most valid form. The book brings together and presents this process at different production stages, as documented by the artist herself. Various visual indicators, such as the rounded corners of a sketchbook and how the layout is pushed towards the edges of the page, capture the artistic process and speak of an ongoing process that involves waiting for whatever is around the next corner or on the next page. The terracotta colour and the scientific manner of drawing the cover references raw materials such as clay, and depicts the transition from a two-dimensional origin to a three-dimensional sculpture. The cover also represents considerations such as observation, exploration, and theory, essential for Johnslien’s methodology. Details within the book include distinctive chapter openers. Each feature has a glued-on image of a sculpture taken at the Lillehammer Art Museum after printing the book. This technique made it possible to include artworks finished just before the exhibition's opening, honouring a long tradition within art book publishing.

The book design was awarded a gold at the Visuelt Awards.