Dag Erik Elgin: Mirror Falling from the Wall

Original or not Since 1986, in his »Originals« series, Dag Erik Elgin has devoted himself as a re-creating painter to his own admittedly subjective, but not unusual, canon of modern painting. In the series he repeats the selected works, all of them Modernist or Clas­sical Modernist, but without pursuing maximum ­authenticity in the copying manner of an art forger. The resulting canvases are at the boundary be­tween complete appropriation and studying replica; in them, Elgin relives as a painter the processes where­by the actual originals arose, as in a reenactment, at the same time using them to generate an intellectual reflection on the sensitive topics of ­original and forgery, of genuine and genuinely copied painting. His »Originals« are aesthetically very attrac­­t­ive, yet—as forgeries—they would not withstand a critical autopsy in the art market, for their materials and manner of production in no way disguise the fact that they have been created in the present. Yet it is the painting itself, the in­sistence on a personal ­product in oil on canvas, that makes the »Original« an original, and this in an age of perfected digital opportunities for appro­pri­ation which would by far outdo any artisanal transfer.