MELK Galleri Oslo

MILKSHAKE #4
https://www.melkgalleri.no/exhibitions/milkshake-4
08.06–29.06.2025
Christine Clemmesen, Minh Ngọc Nguyễn
MELK is excited to present MILKSHAKE #4, a duo exhibition with Copenhagen-based artists Christine Clemmesen and Minh Ngọc Nguyễn. Two artists who explore materiality and image culture through distinct photographic approaches, yet both engage in contextualizing and questioning the boundaries of the still life genre.
Christine Clemmesen works with photography in an approach that challenges traditional representation. Her images consist of layers of narrative and experience in poetic and abstract forms. A primary focus is on the materiality of the prints, which are often on unconventional materials such as stained glass, silk, color filters and marble. The handmade artist frames function as a kind of press, where material is clamped between the image and the glass front and held as a pressed form – a sculptural translation of what a camera does.
Her focus is not on technical perfection, but on awareness of the medium. Clemmesen works anti-dogmatically with photography – regardless of whether it is analog or digital, sharp, or blurry, large or small. What is crucial is how the medium shapes the expression. The temporal dimension of photography is particularly poetic and a central part of her practice. It contains the ability to both abstract and precisely recognize the world, which makes it ideal for her investigations. This ability creates depth, where time and perception overlap and shift in a narrative that balances between documentary and fiction, and between action and composition.