The space around the chair — MORTEN ANDENÆS

Morten Andenæs
The space around the chair
October 26 – December 22, 2023

Three apples. Five carrots.
Cups, books, a rumpled tablecloth.

The room is dark, the valley green, the apple yellow.

A dying plant on a kitchen counter, the face of a girl concealed in the surface of an image.
You wanted to say something about death from the vantage point of middle-age, and how photography as process and practice mirrors all this.

A text accompanying Andenæs’ 7th solo exhibition with the gallery opens with the lines above. The space around the chair picks up where Child smiled. Blank stares from 2021 left off. The chair which was the subject of a photograph in that exhibition has now become a literal image, a presence despite it being absent in the space. The photographic works on display depict landscapes and still lifes, faces, objects, animals and spaces, and even though the world Andenæs presents us with is familiar, there is nothing ordinary about it.

Light is the precondition for any photograph, and in The space around the chair, its role is more explicit than earlier. In one part of the gallery the works are characterized by a flat, institutional light that lends a sense of immanence to the images. This somewhat reticent light that seems to emanate from within is markedly different than the more textured, sacred quality of light prevalent in the gallery’s other space. The images are demarcated by light and shadow, bearing witness to the daily cycle of the home and hinting at the space that exists beyond the picture frame, or chair, if you will.

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