Nonspace
2011
A photographic investigation into the architectural typologies of contemporary gallery interiors
Overview
Through a study of spatial details—walls, thresholds—this series examines the conditions that frame our encounter with art. The gallery, as articulated by Brian O’Doherty in Inside the White Cube, emerges as “a kind of non-space, ultra-space, or ideal space where the surrounding matrix of space-time is symbolically annulled.” These images engage with that proposition, revealing how such spaces both erase and construct context, presenting an architecture that is simultaneously neutral and ideologically charged.
Concept
Beyond its function as a site for display, the gallery operates as a threshold—an architectural and perceptual zone that mediates between the external world and the aesthetic encounter. It is neither entirely public nor private, temporal nor timeless, but suspended somewhere in between. As a space of transition, it invites a mode of looking that is both heightened and detached, encouraging reflection while subtly regulating perception. In this way, the gallery becomes not only a container for artworks, but a quiet actor in their reception—shaping how meaning is staged, suspended, and ultimately absorbed.
Photography, in this context, becomes both document and interruption—a deliberate pause within the continuum of spatial experience. By fixing ephemeral conditions of light, shadow, and surface, the images extract these interiors from their functional timelines, suspending them in a moment of quiet scrutiny. This temporal stillness echoes the gallery’s own ambitions: to remove, isolate, and frame. Yet, where architecture extends through time and movement, photography compresses and distils—offering a static encounter that reveals what often goes unnoticed. Through this lens, the work becomes a meditation on visibility, temporality, and the tension between stillness and transition.
