Build (12), 2006

© Courtesy of the artist an i8Gallery, Reykjavik
Collection

Digital c-print, sandwiched between non-glare acrylic
50 x 60 cm

Birgir Andrésson’s series Build consists of cardboard boxes with rectangles and squares cut from their surfaces. Each cardboard box is an intricacy of openings; the cardboard itself is mere scaffolding. Build is a visualization of the riddle of language, which, as a system of signs, necessarily refers to that which is not present. Language is hence a marking of absence; on Andresson's cardboard boxes, however, the cut-out (the shape of an absence) replaces language. The words, as markers of absence, are themselves absent and each cardboard box is emptied of its capacity for storage. (Eva Heisler)

* 1955 Westmann Islands, Iceland | † 2007