MORTEN ANDENÆS ON STEIN RØNNING

Stein Rønning, h-   H, 2010. Image courtesy of the artist and Galleri Riis, Oslo.

Afterimage by Morten Andenæs:

In a book on a table in a room in our house, there is a photograph of what appears to be a familiar space, reminiscent of a tabletop set against a wall. Two rectangles rise from—or rest on—a horizontal plane, as figures set apart from the background and occupying roughly one third of the frame. The rectangles are nearly identical in size and set almost side by side with a very slight, but significant gap to separate them. I say almost because one of the rectangles is placed slightly deeper into the space than the other, making it impossible to discern whether they, in fact, are different in size. They are significantly lighter than the horizontal and vertical planes surrounding them, while close in density to what I’d call the lip of the table at the very forefront of the space, or its lower one-tenth. The entire image is cast in a cool bluish tint.

Stein Rønning and I were born a generation apart. Which means we’ve grown up with different ways of describing and, perhaps, ultimately seeing the same thing. I recently met him at the lab we both use here in Oslo. I wanted to tell him about this photograph of his that had been on my mind ever since I came across it a few months back. Not having the picture present, I struggled with how to verbally distinguish this particular one from the vast corpus of photographic work he’s been making for as long as I can remember.

The description above was an attempt, later that same day, at describing the image in words, in a way that might make it clear to the artist himself what image I was referring to. And yet—this cool description fails to get at the reason it exists in my mind's eye as an afterimage.

An image is a different thing than a photograph. It’s a sense and a remnant, a fleeting reflection that disappears when you try to grasp it.

Stein Rønning's image lodged in my mind cannot be reduced to the description above, but is an intimation of a relationship between two nearly identical entities, set within a space I experience as familiar, and separated by a receding darkness.

Like parents seated around the kitchen table, the image, to me, conjures up scenes of both intimacy and distance. It evokes excruciating closeness and a chasm that is impossible to overcome. And yet there is calm, matter-of-factness. Two separate, but similar things existing together in the same space, facing the same direction.

Afterimage is an ekphrastic series exploring that one image you see when you close your eyes—the one that lingers in your mind. We invite different people to reflect on an image they can't shake. The column began during our time publishing the journal Objektiv and continues today under Objektiv Press.

Note: The author and the artist are represented by the same gallery.