SUPERFICIAL
2022





superficial reflects upon the contemporary dialectic of surface and content. Through the construction of a planar wall, the viewer is restricted to an eccentric position allowing a view onto the image of the 3D reality and revealing through a slit the mechanism that constructs that reality. The exhibition sets up a provocation by addressing our increasing reliance on zero-depth surfaces.  Sur- meaning “on-top” refers to added machinations over the content.

But before taking a cynical stance, we are reminded of Nietzsche’s words, perhaps pointing toward the fact that architecture should wholly embrace the project of the surface:

“What is required is to stop courageously at the surface, the fold, the skin, to adore appearance… in the whole Olympus of appearance! Those Greeks were superficial – out of profundity!”

The association of authenticity to 3 dimensionality and superficiality to the two-dimensionality is in the eye of superficial a reductive argument.

A realistic texture of green alpine marble is cast onto the drywall with the help of the projector set at an angle in the second room. The live image of that wall is displayed on a laptop placed atop a table which can be viewed from a cut-out window perpendicular to it. The viewer is able to thus only experience the marble through the image. A small slit between the drywall and the existing partition wall of Kirkland looks onto a mirror that reflects the thickness of the former with its stud detail, revealing the poche and thus the trickery. A small nail on the gypsum board casts a shadow breaking the illusion of the marble being real. The projector, the ‘original’ texture on the wall and the corporeal space between the components of the exhibit are the parts that aren’t accessible to the viewer; the only accessible parts are ones that in some capacity make intelligible the machinery that constructs the green alpine marble.


Collaboration w/ 

Pablo Castillo Luna