Blank 1864 - 1941

This ‘Blank’ artwork by Niels Larsen Stevns is a book with untouched pages, sitting here at the SMK. What might Stevns have been pondering as he chose to display it thus? I imagine the artist might have been thinking about the potential held within a blank space, much like a painter faces a bare canvas. The gentle cream tones of the pages create a quiet hum, almost a whisper of stories waiting to be told. It’s tempting to project onto it, to see it as an invitation to the viewer to imagine their own narratives or artworks. Like Agnes Martin's grids, this work operates in the realm of the sublime. It offers a framework, a beginning without a prescribed end. It's about potential, and Stevns invites us to ponder that potential with him. It’s about how each of us, in our own way, fills the void.