• Monochrome Portraits
  • Trine Søndergaard
  • year: 2009
  • edition 3: flexible dimension / edition 5: 60 x 60 cm
  • archival pigment print
  • Photographic portraits are not usually monochrome. They can be in black and white or in colour. But with Trine Søndergaard’s Monochrome Portraits each portrait is focused on one single colour. The portrait and frame is a finely balanced object, where a minimalist expression mixes with the different appearance of every human being.
    None of the monochrome works are identical in colour. Each person has his or her own colour – an uncertain shade of turquoise, brown, violet, etc., that continues in the surrounding frame, which is coloured by hand. The colours are not included in any colour scheme and have no default names.
    In Søndergaard’s portraits the space that is entirely our own is being explored; when we do not interact or try to control our expressions. The individual is put at the centre of a search into visual spaces turned away, silent and evasive. The colour layer enhances the motifs’ introspectiveness, because the portrayed virtually disappear into their respective colour.
    Trine Søndergaard creates images of a mood rather than conventional portraits. She avoids direct confrontation and observes what happens visually when a person looks down and the face is barely visible. In this way she works with portraits as a kind of mental space. She contemplates on subtle things expressed in a person’s appearance, exploring the borders of the genre – moving between individuality and the universal.

Installation views

Trine Søndergaard, Monochrome Portraits, Martin Asbæk Gallery, 2009

  • Monochrome Portraits
  • Trine Søndergaard
  • year: 2009
  • edition 3: flexible dimension / edition 5: 60 x 60 cm
  • archival pigment print
  • Photographic portraits are not usually monochrome. They can be in black and white or in colour. But with Trine Søndergaard’s Monochrome Portraits each portrait is focused on one single colour. The portrait and frame is a finely balanced object, where a minimalist expression mixes with the different appearance of every human being.
    None of the monochrome works are identical in colour. Each person has his or her own colour – an uncertain shade of turquoise, brown, violet, etc., that continues in the surrounding frame, which is coloured by hand. The colours are not included in any colour scheme and have no default names.
    In Søndergaard’s portraits the space that is entirely our own is being explored; when we do not interact or try to control our expressions. The individual is put at the centre of a search into visual spaces turned away, silent and evasive. The colour layer enhances the motifs’ introspectiveness, because the portrayed virtually disappear into their respective colour.
    Trine Søndergaard creates images of a mood rather than conventional portraits. She avoids direct confrontation and observes what happens visually when a person looks down and the face is barely visible. In this way she works with portraits as a kind of mental space. She contemplates on subtle things expressed in a person’s appearance, exploring the borders of the genre – moving between individuality and the universal.