For several years, Sofie Thorsen has been occupied with the city: its architectural framework and its social, cultural, historical and political implications. The theme of the exhibition and the catalogue, The Achromatic Island, is, in a broader sense, about urbanity and development and its ramifications, and about focusing on the small but significant details that help shape the spaces we live in – urban spaces, as well as the cultural and social spaces that define our experience. At the same time, Sofie Thorsen deals with the notion of perception – as a cultural phenomenon as well as a personal experience. In many ways, The Achromatic Island is about seeing: what is immediately in front of us, what we often overlook, and what we haven’t seen or haven’t yet tried to see. How do we actually look at reality? How do we register, chronicle and photograph our surrounding world? And how can historical, cultural or individual views of the world be understood and read?

As indicated by the title, a main topic of the exhibition and the catalogue is colour – the perception of colour as well as the relations between reality and its black and white reproductions. This topic is an important point of interest in several of the works, along with a focus on abstraction and reduction as a mode of description, aspects, which are also essential for the design of the catalogue.

Published in connection with the exhibition The Achromatic Island November 14, 2009 - January 24, 2010 in the Aarhus Art Building, Denmark, the catalogue presents recent works. The catalogue contains texts by Bettina Steinbrügge and Karin Hindsbo.