The boundary between painting and sculpture is fluid in Annette Senneby's art. For example, the canvas is never just a canvas but a material starting point and a beginning: in a piece of glass, a sheet of metal, or a barked sail. A meeting arises between material and pigment that can take different paths depending on the laws of physics, how the artist's hand lets go, stops, or how she blows with her mouth. Sometimes the paint layers on a surface, sometimes it flows out, sometimes it is saturated and creates a darkness like a pond or a black hole.

The white surface of the painting constitutes the space of the forms, a place where they are arranged and set in motion. When it is then placed in an exhibition room, its boundaries are abolished, the painting merges with the walls of the room and the forms are freed from their frame. Senneby constantly dwells on boundaries and their displacement – ​​the lines are drawn and loosened. The same thing with gravity – the law of gravity is illustrated and put out of play. The abstract movement and displacement tells us something about what it means to be in the world and how the different states of life consist of both extremes and voids.

In the exhibition Umbra brings together works from the late 1980s to the present day. Given the inner logic of artistry, the present and the past are two coexisting things, older paintings and sculptures are reactivated and placed in relation to newly produced works. The exhibition is Annette Senneby's first in Sweden since 2009 and has taken shape through conversations with curator Emily Fahlén.

Annette Senneby (b. 1951 in Gothenburg) is an artist active in Stockholm. She has participated in group and solo exhibitions in Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Austria, Argentina, Thailand, Vietnam and the USA. In 1986–87 she was a PS1 fellow in New York, which created a lifelong connection to the city's art scene. In 1997–2006 she was a professor at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm. In 2002 she was elected a member of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts.

Emily Fahlén

© Annette Senneby / Image copyright 2023

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