Nan Ke Gallery is pleased to announce the upcoming group exhibition On Set, opening on August 2. Since Theodor W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer introduced the concept of the "Culture Industry" in Dialectic of Enlightenment, film production has often been understood as a form of assembly-line manufacturing.
In the exhibition On Set, artist Martine Poppe (b. 1988, lives and works in London and Oslo) imbues the fictional space of the "set" with a meditative openness through her ongoing exploration of light, sky, and the language of image surfaces. Poppe’s artistic practice consistently navigates between abstraction and representation. Her works originate from photographic captures of natural imagery, which she digitally processes to the brink of blurring and distortion, then transforms into soft luminous landscapes on canvas with rhythmic, delicate brushstrokes. This approach gives her paintings a visual quality reminiscent of pixelation, overexposure, and refracted light—as if magnified from a digital image—creating an effect that is both intimate and transcendent.
Poppe's works have been exhibited at major international art institutions and art museums, and are held in numerous public and private collections, including the UK Government Art Collection, Norway's KODE Art Museums, the art collections of the University of Oxford and University College London, and London's Saatchi Collection. At the Saatchi Gallery, she has not only participated in landmark group exhibitions such as "New Order II," but will also return for its significant 25th anniversary retrospective “The Long Now 1985-2025” in 2025. Additionally, her works are included in the collections of Kistefos Museum, Benetton Art Foundation, and the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation, among other international institutions. These exhibitions and acquisitions not only affirm Poppe's unique position within contemporary expressive painting, but also reflect her profound investigation into the relationship between image translation, climatic perception, and visual sensibility.
Martine Poppe
Pareidolia, 2025
Oil on polyester restoration fabric
148h x 120w cm
© Courtesy of the artist
In this exhibition, Poppe presents her signature Cloud Library series, depicting skies viewed through airplane windows. These works draw from an extensive archive of aerial photographs the artist has captured over the past decade. Through continuous revisiting and editing, Poppe amplifies the visual elements that initially moved her, constructing a "set space" that floats above the landscape. Her paintings do not reproduce a specific moment in the sky but instead become visual afterimages suspended between memory and imagination—a prolonged gaze at a certain state of "instantaneity."
In the top-floor gallery space, Poppe's three works—Pareidolia, Not a Cloud in Sight #2, and Neverwhere—form a colossal studio backdrop, their expansive, gradient tones revealing the fluid rhythm of the sky. Through jump-cut-like juxtapositions, they achieve an eerily surreal clarity and softness. This series enters into visual dialogue with Marlon Wobst's triptych, which depicts crashing waves and bodily movement: one unfolds like a draped backdrop, the other looms like a confrontational camera lens. Their juxtaposition exposes the three-dimensional environment of image production. When viewers reach this virtual "set" on the top floor, the seemingly infinite expanse begins to reveal its boundaries—the lighting, scenery, and the structural edges of the canvases all betray their artificial construction.
Martine Poppe
Not a cloud in sight #2, 2025
Oil on polyester restoration fabric
148h x 120w cm
© Courtesy of the artist
On the exhibition's second level, Poppe's painted skies are repurposed as constructed scenery, allowing the images to "reappear" within the gallery space. This approach not only dissolves the boundary between artwork and environment but also makes the very "process of image production" an integral part of the viewing experience. With remarkable subtlety, Poppe intervenes in the mechanics of visual storytelling—through acts of smearing, reconstructing, and re-representing—to blur the fixed edges of reality. In this state of uncertainty and dissipation, she constructs a visual climate that seems to transcend time itself.
Martine Poppe
Neverwhere, 2025
Oil on polyester restoration fabric
148h x 120w cm
© Courtesy of the artist
In the context of On Set, Poppe's works resemble blank marginalia on a clapperboard—their hazy hues and softened edges tracing fragments never formally scripted. The skies on her canvases are neither backdrop nor subject, but rather silent protagonists: they witness characters emerging, sets being constructed, and narratives suspended, becoming that first glimmer of light before the image is ever captured.
July 31, 2025
