Unpaged Edited by Elin Aspeklev, Peter Bengtsen & Åsa Nacking Foreword by Elin Aspeklev Designed by Matthias Hübner 22 x 15 cm Language: Swedish & English Paperback Publisher: Lundskonsthall 2024
In 1979 John Fekner stencilled a series of dates onto walls in central Lund; in 1984 he came back with Don Leicht (1946–2021) and painted We Overfeed Our Heroes Until They Explode on the city hall. Forty years later Lunds konsthall invited Fekner back, this time alongside Brad Downey, to find out what had survived — of the paint, of the city, of the original gesture. Dates Doors Then & More is what came out of it: a work spread across five sites in central Lund, part ephemeral, part built to last, with the piece on the Rådhuset facade facing Skomakargatan due to stay up until the summer of 2028.
The book follows the whole process, and is treated as a part of the artwork rather than a catalogue of it. Edited by Elin Aspeklev, Peter Bengtsen and Åsa Nacking — Bengtsen tracing the forty-year afterlife of the 1984 stencil as it slid from unsanctioned street painting to commissioned public art — it also keeps in the awkward parts of the commission: the two artists had never worked together before, and Fekner had already decided to stop making new artworks. Designed by Matthias Hübner, in Swedish and English throughout
