The catalogue accompanies Dag Erik Elgin´s exhibition Amor Vacui, presented at Gallery Opdahl in Stavanger in 2006. As a thematic point of origin for the paintings of Amor Vacui, - and also centred in most of Elgin’s art moreover, is the concept of sinthome. This concept originates from Jacques Lacan’s psychoanalysis, and describes an individual’s indefinable experience of borderlines. In other words, an experience or condition that cannot be explained because it withholds any description. In the apparently simple and monochrome paintings Elgin searches for the inexplicable. Elgin links the concept to his paintings ability to create a state of compact space which: “implies that you can get closer to something, but at the same time not get too close, because then it will vanish (…) it is about a state of mind that appears before you get to the close reading, it is about giving space to the spectator.”