Anna Kristensen, Set, 2020, oil and acrylic on linen, 122.00 x 152.50 x 2.50 cm, TCG22218
(photo: Yanni Kronenberg)

Set depicts a sparse forest as seen from within a cabin on Esopus Creek near Phoenicia, NY, several hours’ drive north of NYC. The two trees which dominate the painting could at first glance be mistaken for two images of the same tree, like a stereograph card or two successive frames from a film strip. Upon closer inspection, the dark outline is revealed to be a wooden window frame, bisected and tilting away slightly from an obscured horizon line in the trees beyond. The woozy pseudosymmetry of these two trees complicates the viewer’s sense of perspective. The painting’s outer rectangular borders are in tension with the slightly crooked windows depicted therein. These spatial cues work both together and against one another in much the way a film’s set and backdrop do with a director’s camera lens, and the viewer finds themselves caught up in this riddle between interior and exterior, the single and a set of doubles.

- notes on artwork by Rob Smith in conversation with the artist