Galleri Nicolai Wallner is pleased to present Dødvågen, a solo exhibition by the artist Anna Kristine Hvid Petersen.

Dødvågen translates to “dead awake”. The expression combines two opposites, but also uses the word ‘dead’ as an emphasiser, giving a mirror image within the verbiage. This title, and the exhibition itself, are an insistence that things can exist in multiple opposing states all at once.

Anna Kristine Hvid Petersen’s practice investigates the more obscure and entangled realities of our world. While the paintings may at first give way to ideas of the “other-worldly”, they also reveal a raw and exposed view of real places and beings. Hvid Petersen does not work purely from visions originating in the mind, but has a practice that is structured around observation of objects and nature. Arranging figures and placing them in a constructed scene, the artist then observes not just their external notions but integrates somatic observations from her own body or multisensorial inputs from the environment. In this process of observation she seeks to step out of the human gaze and explore the interconnected nature of all bodies and organisms. In so doing, her paintings materialise the immaterial and visualise the relationships between bodies, allowing them to contain their contradictions and complexities.

Though the artist works from the tradition of baroque still life painting, with sensorial theatricality and lush details, she approaches the objects, subject matter, and the field of painting in new dimensions.

This gathering of new works shows the artist reaching to new ways of working. Hvid Petersen’s exploration of the landscape and how it can be integrated into the field of still life speaks to her dedication to the field of painting on the whole. In the works Der er altid et landskab som trænger sig på (2025) and And it whistled a song when you were not aware (2025) the landscape is pulled to the forefront of the work, questioning the role of the setting and context of a still life. Bringing her subjects into the plein-air and allowing the environment to permeate the arrangement, she blurs her own preconceived boundaries.

In works Som det kan gå (2025) and Det går (2025), the structures of the still life are exposed. Table legs wobble and stumble, or stand on soft bushy heads of wheat. Guiding the eye from the table top that might usually be used to display the still life, to the body of the table, Hvid Petersen destabilizes our idea of what we consider known.