MEDALLION

MEDIA

DATE

medallion

MEDAL

commissioned by BERGEN UNIVERSITY/MUSEUM
(used to represent  Norway at the International  2012 medallion symposium at The Huntingdon Museum)

ILOVEYOULOVE ME

The medal made by Norwegian-English Ian Garlant appears as an abstract pattern, but it is actually a Norse runic inscription from 12th century Bergen. Without loosing the content of the text, the runes have been arranged and made into a design: ek pik un / un pu mek, meaning: ‘I love You, love me’. In this way, the medal appears as a kind of three-dimensional calligraphy - the dialogue inherent in the text itself mirrored in the appearance of the same inscription from two sides. Where such an inscription is carved in wood, the letters are ‘nothingness’, air, surrounded by matter and kept in place by it. The medal, however, shows the opposite procedure: the letters are matter surrounded by air, yet kept in place by the circle. Love is not embedded in matter, but is itself the main substance.

In addition, the inscription appears like sound waves on a circular screen, a graphic picture of the very sentence: I love you, love me, suspended in the air.

Prof. Dr. Henrik von Achen
Director, university museum of Bergen

Wood and bronze 23/7/12

Just what future the Designer of the universe has provided for the souls of men I do not know, I cannot prove. But I find that the whole order of Nature confirms my confidence that, if it is not like our noblest hopes and dreams, it will transcend them.