Between the morning and the handbag

Last year she held solo exhibitions at the South London Gallery, the Bern Kunsthalle, the Nuremberg Kunsthalle and the Sonia Henie-Onstadt Museum in Oslo. At present, works by her are on show at the Royal Academy of Arts in London.

Anne Katrine Dolven’s videos resemble her paintings in the sense that they generally contain very little narrative matter and the viewer’s experience of the works will deepen and diversify the longer he or she views and observes them. Dolven’s videos are carefully considered in formal terms and spare in expression, yet containing properties easily associated with narrative – humour and eroticism – at times even simultaneously.

The video "between the morning and the handbag" was recently shot in Norway on 35-mm film at five a.m. It was photographed in real time and it has not been edited. The video consists of two projections. In one of them a nude, bald woman sits at the water’s edge, while the other shows her handbag, a kind of symbol of Western woman. The film records the passing of time: ripples on the surface of the water and the woman’s minor, unintentional movements. She is in some way absurd, like a hybrid of a human being and a piece of sculpture by Arp. The handbag is both a type and a rejected individual. It is difficult to define the emotional mood of the video: it is simultaneously tranquil and lyrical while also absurd and amusing. Each viewer will re-create the work on the basis of personal experiences and values.

Anne Katrine Dolven’s paintings are more unequivocal in content than her video pieces: they are the most wonderful works imaginable. Executed with extreme command and control, the paintings almost dissolve to become immaterial, into light whose beginning and end are difficult to define in any physical terms. Dolven’s paintings are like the breathing of angels; the experience of viewing them is almost supernatural.