- Clara Prat-Gay
Artists: Lucy Raven, Nina Canell, Olga Balema, and Miguel Angel Rios
A Subtle Remainder prompts a reconsideration of certain processes, activities, and forces we cannot see and strive to understand. In this exhibition, there might not be a lot to see—perhaps nothing at all. Sounds and activities remain faint, their genesis unknown. Within this trembling space, what appears to be relentlessly insisting on its materiality can in fact vanish in an instant.
Building on materials that are often conceived as nothingness—air, pressure, and speed —A Subtle Remainder operates at the threshold of perception. Featuring a series of shadowgrams by Lucy Raven (b. 1977), a broken frame by Nina Canell (b. 1979), a sculpture by Olga Balema (b. 1984), and a video by Miguel Ángel Ríos (b. 1943), the works animate the limits of the invisible and the unresolved. In each one, the remainder is posed as a warning—the trace of uncontainable phenomena striving to congeal unreadable threats.
Canell’s Dead Air (2012-2024) holds a lost fragment of congealed air within a wooden frame, asserting the material’s density and fragility. Untitled (2021) by Lucy Raven, features inflected textures that index a series of detonations happening in the brevity of a moment. Olga Balema’s Loop 13675 (2023) resists heavy weight while simultaneously bending into the space, resisting its imperceptibility. Piedras Blancas (2014) by Miguel Ángel Ríos permeates the space with sonic reverberations, reflecting on endless flow and disruption. Together, the works hint at deviant matter and thrumming sensation, rewinding to that fraught moment when transformation assumes form.
