Anne Senstad
Soft Geometry-Liquid Commodity
November 12–December 13, 2015
Opening: Friday, November 13, 6–8pm
Solivagant* is pleased to announce a solo show by New York-based Norwegian artist Anne Senstad.
The multi-location installation Soft Geometry-Liquid Commodity presents a series of new geometric and text-based neon works that suggest a route running through Solivagant* gallery space and the city block hosting it. The gallery will physically expand from its 79-square-foot room to the whole block between Orchard St., Hester St., Allen St. and Grand St.
Anne Senstad’s site-responsive installation aims to comment on and highlight the role of Chinatown as a cultural antecedent to New York and as one of its last bastions of authenticity. Solivagant*, as an intervening exhibition space stitched into the fabric of the local trade, investigates the value and experience of art by placing it outside of the conventional gallery context, taking it back to an informal trade space and to its manufacturing place of origin.
Lighting systems, neon signs and displays are largely present in the Chinatown cityscape. Soft Geometry creates a correspondence of light, shapes, text and color between the different displays along the city block, a cartographic and aesthetic anthropological intervention.
Liquid Commodity reflects ideas of trade, business, service industry and fast movement of commodities that we find in the market place and in the neighborhood. Art exists as commodity and currency, illuminating and directing desires for possession and consumerism. With the seduction of colors, neon lights and the art object, commodification and trade is demystified and exposed.
The exhibition at Solivagant* will be accompanied by two collaborative performances in response to Senstad’s installations, starting with Fluxus artist Patrice Lerochereuil on Friday, November 13 and culminating with saxophonist Ilhan Ersahin’s site-responsive sound performance for the closing event on Saturday, December 12.
Anne Senstad works in the multidisciplinary intersections of installation art, photography, video, site specificity and land art. Her work is concerned with sensorial aesthetics, perceptive and transformative ideas of art, and philosophical practice and social-political awareness. Her work has been widely exhibited internationally, chiefly at the 55th and 56th Venice Biennale, The Bruges Art and Architecture Triennale 2015, Zendai Moma, Shanghai, Abu Dhabi Art Hub, and ISEA Dubai, UAE in 2014, as well as in numerous private galleries, festivals and institutions.
Solivagant* is an art project space measuring exactly 79 square feet, located in the heart of New York CIty’s Lower East Side. As a platform for experimentation of contemporary practices, it invites artists to work responsively and site-specifically through public interactions, community involvement, installations and performances. Cultural Nomadism, contamination of productions and hybridism of ideas are the fundamentals of Solivagant*‘s projects.
Artworks are on view daily from 9am to 7pm through the gallery’s window. Gallery space opens by appointment and during performances. Documentation of exhibitions can be accessed 24/7 online at solivagantnyc.com.
For press inquiries please contact the gallery at info [at] solivagantnyc.com
