Set
Anna Kristensen
Feb 1st - Mar 1st, 2020
But then what are you up to with these images and objects that seem to speak so calmly? I think it’s this appreciation of making a method out of moments that I find intriguing; of unhurrying time; of turning distractions into acts of attention, details into events, where each object or image is a riddle to the discipline, labour and patience that it takes to make it. In this way (I hope you don’t mind me saying) there’s something very untimely about this work. I’m not talking about the paintings speaking back to the history of photorealism (which, if not ignored completely these days, is usually a punching bag in theoretical debates that have always seemed too rehearsed for my liking). Nor does it seem all that necessary to consider your glass sculptures from within traditions of minimalism (these objects don’t exactly reject representational content and craftsmanship). No, I’m talking about the way your process refuses a dominant version of time that by its very nature and implementation is rushed, extractive and heavy. Rather than abiding by the logic of the audit where “moments are the elements of profit” (Marx quoting a factory report in Capital) your work affords a slowness and care to moments in the form of objects and images. And if we all have to participate, in some way, in what Marx called usurped time, I want to suggest that, by working in the way you do, you somehow return time as form.
An excerpt from ‘A Window is a Verb’ by Tom Melick, for the occasion of Set, Ditch Projects 2020, booklet published by Cooperative Editions and Anna Kristsensen
Anna Kristensen (b. 1983, Sydney, Australia) lives and works in Brooklyn, NYC. Set is her first solo exhibition in the US, and was developed on residency at the Vermont Studio Center and Mass Moca in 2019, and at Urbanglass, Brooklyn. The exhibition is funded in part by an Australia Council Career Development Grant. Anna received an MFA from the University of NSW Art & Design, Sydney, in 2009, where she taught from 2009-16. She has undertaken residencies at Art OMI, NY (2017), The Australia Council for the Arts’ Greene Street Studio, NYC and the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, NE (2013). Her work has been exhibited internationally and is in the collection of the Art Gallery of Western Australia, Artbank, the Cruthers Collection of Women’s Art, University of Western Australia, Shepparton Art Museum and Wollongong City Gallery. Anna is represented by The Commercial, Sydney and teaches painting at Rutgers University, Newark NJ.
www.annakristensen.com.au