MORTEN ANDENÆS – CHILD SMILED. BLANK STARES.
2021-10-18Like much of his work over the past decade, the 25 new photographic works on display revolve around fundamental questions pertaining to picture-making. What role do images play in how we perceive the world and each other, and what possibilities do we have of transcending or seeing beyond these horizons?
Home and the immediate family is a recurring theme in Andenæs’ work. This initial world of ours around the kitchen table is a breeding ground for conflicting emotions and narratives that must be renegotiated and reevaluated in the course of a lifetime. For the child, distinctions between you and I, myth and reality or home and world are blurry, and the photographic juxtapositions in the exhibition mirror this fluidity.
In Andenæs´ work an array of conflicting narratives are in play. Each image is allowed room to mirror the complexity of experienced reality without reducing it to simple slogans or analysis. In the photographs on display, details from art history and popular culture seep into familiar tropes like still-life, landscape studies and family portraiture, whilst Andenæs’ representations of well-known animals and objects vacillate between a picture-book matter-of-factness and an altogether more ambiguous and anthropomorphic approach.
Opposite – From left to right, from right to wrong, 2021
Exhibition runs through to November 13th, 2021
Galleri Riis
Arbins gate 7
NO-0253 Oslo
Norway
