Dag Erik Elgin: Mirror Falling from the Wall

Book excerpt: 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, but at the same time uses them to generate an intellectual reflection on the sensitive topics of ­original and forgery. His Originals are aesthetically 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 in an age of perfected digital opportunities for appro­pri­ation, which would outdo any artisanal transfer.