ELEMENTS V - MUSIC FOR PLUTOCRACY, 2021

S12 Galleri og Verksted, Bergen, Norway

Music for Plutocracy by Anne Katrine Senstad with a sound environment by composer JG Thirlwell at S12 Galleri og Verksted, January 16 - March 28, 2021

Senstad's solo exhibition Music for Plutocracy is part of her ongoing research project Capitalism in the Public Realm that she started in 2014 with the monumental text work, Gold Guides Me. The complexity of the installation can be entered through numerous portals: the visual, the sensorial, the psychological and physiological - where the marriage between the multichromatic light and sound environment, with critical ideas on consumerism and ethics, and the devotional aspects of capitalism and its power,i.e. the golden neon temple, creates the totality of immersion. The experiential light and sound sculpture environment traverses perception of space, time and the purity of both cosmic and mathematical properties, - and yet simulatnously aspects of ethics as representational through redefining our perception of the contemporary world we find ourselves in, inviting the particiant to rest within the folds of a symphonic universe, offering a space of contemplation and reflection. Elements V, which constitues Music for Plutocracy, is the fifth structural and experiential light environment in the ELEMENTS series. The ephemerality of color and sound, operating on scalas of frequencies and temperatures, provides for what can be described as the essence of the immersive, when the public becomes part of the art work itself.

- Now you can see my son how ludicrous and brief are all the goods in fortune's ken, which humankind contend for: you see from this how all the gold there is beneath the moon, or that there ever was, could not relieve one of these weary souls.

Inferno, Canto VII, 4th Circle : Plutus

Dante Alighieri (1263 - 1321)

- Look at the orators in our republics; as long as they are poor, both state and people can only praise their uprighteness; but once they are fattened on the publics funds, they conceive a hatred for justice, plan intrigues against the people and attack democracy.

Plutus

Aristophanes (388 BC)

Supported by Arts Council Norway/Fond for Lyd og Bilde, Norske Billedkunstnere/BKV, Norway, and Foundation for Contemporary Art New York.

Gallery curatorial Text by Erik Meling PDF Download

Above: 3D Renderings by Donatella Araujo LeFosse, Buenos Aires

Materials: Neon tubes, transformers, polyurathane acrylic rods, wires, attachments, Dimentions variable. All images, installation design and artwork © Anne Katrine Senstad.

For inquiries on this installation please contact info (at) annesenstad (dot) com.

All photos by Anne Katrine Senstad ©AKSstudio

©annekatrinesenstad2020