MELK is pleased to present TOPOEMAS by Anne Katrine Senstad, an exhibition presenting a selection of new photo-based collage works, and marks Senstad’s first exhibition with MELK.
Senstad’s exhibition title, TOPOEMAS, is a revisitation to Mexican author Octavio Paz. Inspired by Paz’ collection of six esoteric, concrete poems, Senstad has re-contextualized visual language and spaces of ideas, processes, and origin.
Paz’ title is a word play on topos (place) and poemas (poems), where each of his poems employ typographic experimentation and spatial composition that create visual-verbal experiences and semiotic narration. Where spatial poetry represents a tension of objects-words in space-time, other art forms similarly manifest these tensions through verbal, sonic, kinetic, and visual elements that intertextualize.
In Senstad’s work, visual elements emerge as traces seen in compositional form, poetic notifications of a time event, and the merging of spatiality and line. Her visual material has been collaged, redistributed, and layered, further treating aesthetic harmony through static noise and de-construction. She returns to photography not only through its materiality, but as a medium for the translation of her ideas.
The source material of her new photo-collages, derive from extractions from her video trilogy Chiasm of Lament I, II, III (2025) and her large scale spatial light sculpture work series Elements (2018-), – now further distilled through processes into autonomous bodies of work.
In the Elements Collages work, architectural structures appear as towers or vast gates, representational of devotional spaces, colonnades, the Tower of Babel, or industrial, futuristic structures. The collages depict the origin of the artists conceptual plans, or blue print, for her monumental light sculptures as illustrations for future creations, before neon lights, transformers and electricity are employed. Meticulously layered to create dimensional volume and illusionary space, the photo-collages are processed through various methods that result in an appearance both analogue and charcoaled.
In the Chiasm of Lament Collages, the artist furthers the original source video material by extracting from its own re-composition, departing from the moving image itself, utilizing what remains in the aftermath. Here the collaged video imagery turns to print form as an amplified convulsion of somber beauty and cosmology.
The Chiasm of Lament video series is a response to the liminal spheres of technology and generative information that has been given spiritual and existential power. The title refers to the crossing of paths that are melancholic in nature, where ambiguous transformations move in alternate or opposing directions. In this work, Senstad works with technology as method for de-constructing concentric form, light leaks, and particles. Form and movement are reduced to glitches, sparkles, and flickering, harkening to early space imagery, technology noise, and signal error. Through a distillation of captured movement, time-extraction, and focus, we are reminded of the significance of our perceptual realms.
Supported by Billedkunstnernes Vederlags Fond and Atelier Nord Studio Program
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