Fredrik Værslev’s work has always been about expanding the possibilities and the field of painting through the interlacing of technical experimentation and conceptual framing. Tan Lines aims to do the same: to represent an artistic practice in the form of a book.

Displayed at three venues from 2017 to 2018, each of the thirty-two works from the series Sail Paintings is presented here. Værslev’s work brings together a wide range of elements, including nautical symbols, stripes, vividly painted or silkscreened colors, oil drips from the studio floor, art-historical and autobiographical references co-inhabiting the surface of each piece. In this book, Værslev has placed transparent designs across every page, adding more forms onto the already multilayered paintings, which are composed of painted canvasses folded and sewn together into triangles. This gesture, imbuing the works with even more puzzle-like symbolism, represents yet another step in a practice that is based on constant research and experimentation with, but also within, his works.

Accompanying the monumental reproductions in this book are two essays, by Giovanni Carmine and Michelle Cotton, which deconstruct the paintings’ iconography and process, and an interview with the artist by Adrienne Drake.

This book was published on the occasion of the exhibition “Tan Lines,” at Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen, St. Gallen (November 11, 2017–January 14, 2018), Bonner Kunstverein, Bonn (February 3–April 1, 2018), and Fondazione Giuliani, Rome (October 13–December 22, 2018).