Anne Katrine Senstad, "Beckoned to Blue"

About

Color embodies the universal; ascending light represents the connection with the universe, while horizontal lines can remind us of the open landscape, the sea merging with the sun, perhaps internally experienced as a sensation of tranquility and eternity. - Anne Katrine Senstad

SL Gallery is pleased to present Anne Katrine Senstad’s new solo exhibition Beckoned to Blue examining the essence of the color blue, presented in three parts: Elements III - Blue - an immersive light sculpture installation in the main gallery space; a sensory chamber installation with a sound piece by Catherine Christer Hennix; and a set of accompanying photographic works featuring blue in an exploration of dimensionality.

Elements III – Blue defines the environment as luminous blues that envelope the fabric of our cognitive body. Made up of monochromatic squares of light defined by an inner blue spectral vertical portal centered in the space, the viewer experiences the interior and exterior light sculptures, resonating through prismatic frequencies. The immersive quality offers the viewer a dialectic between center and horizon—the sculptural light composition enveloping us with a sense of the infinite. Senstad’s cosmology of spacetime and light beckons you to a matrix of horizontal and vertical expressions of blue light, evoking fractal topologies. In space, distance is the present—the horizon extending far beyond our frame of reference as blue columns of light ascend to the empyrean. Senstad’s interpretation of blue as physical environment is informed as much by the artist’s curiosity about the emotional, physiological, and scientific phenomena that constitute our concept of color as it serves her lifelong desire to capture the impossible beauty and sensorial properties of color in the abstract.

While Elements III – Blue explores the immensity of space, Senstad’s sensory chamber installation represents the internal geography of the viewer’s physical self. Here, the installation brings the public into an architecturally reductive private chamber, echoing the internal - the physiological and psychological experience of the work. Playing on a 18:32 minute loop within the chamber, the video work, Beckoned to Blue (2019), travels through compositions in multiple hues of blue. The accompanying sound piece for the video, The Well-Tuned Marimba (1976), composed and performed by electronic sound pioneer and mathematician Catherine Christer Hennix, creates sparkling spatial sensations between the gravity of Hennix’s keyboard, sine-wave generator, and the Sheng - a traditional Chinese polyphonic reed instrument that merges Hennix’s ocular minimalist sound with the aural color spheres evident in the video. Senstad has collaborated with Hennix with on several exhibitions. 

The Elements series began in 2018 as a commissioned immersive light sculpture installation for group exhibition Through The Spectrum at Athr Gallery in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia in collaboration with Pace Gallery and Cruz-Diez Foundation, alongside artists James Turrell, Robert Irwin, Carlos Cruz-Diez, and Leo Villareal. Elements II was created for the exhibition Scene Unseen - On Nordic Art and Design at He Xiangning Art Museum in Shenzhen, China, curated by Feng Boyi and Norwegian curator Bjørn Inge Follevåg.

This marks Senstad’s first solo exhibition with SL Gallery. Beckoned to Blue will be on view from April 3 through May 31, 2019 with an opening reception on April 3 from 6–9pm. SL Gallery is located at 335 West 38th Street. Gallery Hours: Tuesday – Friday 11am - 6pm, Saturday (by appointment), closed Sunday & Monday.

Anne Katrine Senstad was raised in Singapore and Norway and received her art education at Parsons School of Design, The New School for Social Research in New York, and Berkeley University in California. Her practice lies in the intersections of architectural installation art, photography, video art, neon sculpture and site specificity within the language of chromatic minimalism and light environments. For several decades, her practice has been focused on the phenomenology of perception of light, sound and color. She has exhibited internationally in galleries, museums and institutions including the 55th and 56th Venice Biennale (Italy), Bruges Art and Architecture Triennale (Belgium), He Xiangning Art Museum (China), Kunsthall 3,14 (Norway), Trafo Kunsthall (Norway), Octavia Art Gallery (New Orleans + Houston), and Zendai MoMA (China). For more information visit www.annesenstad.com.

Follow the conversation on Instagram @sl.galley @annesenstad #beckonedtoblue

Sound collaboration: Catherine Christer Hennix, The Well Tuned Marimba, 1976 from Selected Early Keyboard Works (Blank Forms Editions/Empty Editions, 2018)

Beckoned to Blue is supported by The Royal Norwegian Consulate General New York.