Counterforms

The title "Counterforms" derives from a typographic concept: as described by Ellen Lupton and based on the principles enunciated by Jan Tschichold, in typography, "counterforms" refer to the spaces within and around letters that make them legible, defining their proportions and rhythm and determining how the forms are read. These spaces are not empty. They organize the relationships between elements and structure the conditions through which the form manifests itself. This logic inspires the exhibition, where interstices operate as an organizing condition, extending the counterform beyond the page to the

spatial, material, and technical infrastructures through which artworks are produced, disseminated, and presented.

Across cinema, photography, installations, painting, and moving images, fragmentation and mediation shape how works are made and perceived. In Racheal Crowther's Best Before (2023), pharmaceutical wall clocks labeled with the names of antidepressants circulate within a visual language of care, in which time, therapy, and behavior align with

corporate models. In Nat Faulkner's Untitled (Cast) (2026), photographic processes

extend beyond the image, incorporating tape, dust, and the conditions of production, bringing the technical apparatus and its result into the same context.

A similar attention to systems of management and display appears in Anna Howard's Glitter (2026), where packaging, storage, and distribution are reconfigured as sculptural supports that operate on the boundary between container, display, and administration, recalling the provisional economies of Arte Povera and the dispersive archival logic of Fluxus.

Questions of framing and reconstruction permeate Yvo Cho's work After Buren (2026), which draws on archival documentation of Daniel Buren's installation in New York, where the Twin Towers remain visible as a temporal marker. Reworked through reproduction and the intervention of artificial intelligence, the image remains in constant flux, subject to folding, repetition, and displacement.

A similar sense of constructed space emerges in Vincenzo Ottino's Cinecittà (2025), a projection work that draws on images taken by the artist at the Cinecittà studios, where "cloak-and-dagger" films were produced within the scenographic architecture of Rome. The projector alternates images and blank fields at fixed intervals, producing a measured oscillation in which the relationship between image and apparatus becomes structuring. This temporal register extends in Ufuoma Essi's Half Memory (2024), where Toni Morrison's concept of "rememory" informs a practice attentive to partial memory and archival absence, while diverse geographies become visible through a logic aligned with that of surveillance.

Elsewhere, signals persist as traces. In Anna Clegg's painting Exterior 10 (2025), the image of a bell, once connected to a floodgate system activated at high tide, appears as a fortuitous marker rather than a fixed point of orientation. Its function is displaced, operating as a residual sonic sign between activation and obsolescence. Nina Porter's series of black-and-white contact analog prints (2024–2025) records duration through the body, with a camera embedded in a backpack and activated by use rather than intent. The exhibition follows the waiting, the images recording the time passed rather than discrete events. Each encounter takes place within a familiar protocol, where the space is arranged and the body positioned in relation to it. The device records not only light, but also the temporal and

spatial conditions through which the image becomes possible. In Jason Hirata's Floaters (2019–ongoing), projection systems operate without content, looping standby screens emitting a range of blue fields. The projectors, borrowed from cultural networks across Venice, place the work in a broader field of circulation. Their empty emission draws attention to the digital conditions through which images are transmitted, relocating the form within the operational space of the apparatus. Acts of resizing and expansion recur throughout the exhibition. In Amelia Gill's Princeton (2025), ambitious images from admission letters

publicly disseminated on social media are reconstructed through fields of color that extend across the surrounding surface. In Hannah Black's Jaki Liebezeit During a Power Cut Circa 1970 (2012), rhythm, labor, and historical reference are approached through repetition and interruption, recalling sustained, metronomic drumming during a blackout, in which time and

attention are suspended. The exhibition traces how systems of acquisition, processing, and

display shape artistic production. Meaning emerges through the relationships between elements rather than from a single form. The gallery is conceived as a compositional field in which intervals, discontinuities, and spatial relationships shape the encounter, extending the counterform to a structuring principle.