Installation view of 《Counterforms》 ©ThisWeekendRoom
ThisWeekendRoom presents a two-person
exhibition 《Counterforms》 by
Jong Oh and Amber Toplisek, on view through December 6.
“Counterform” is a term form typography
referring to the empty space or the negated shape created by a form. This
exhibition juxtaposes the two artists’ approaches to dealing with invisible
forms, asking how what is emptied comes to generate meaning. Through works that
reveal the margins surrounding the tangible and the contours of what has been
obscured, the exhibition invites viewers to consider a sensibility that
transcends conventional visual order.
Installation view of 《Counterforms》 ©ThisWeekendRoom
Jong Oh moves fluidly across public and
private realms surrounding his environment, continually shifting an imagined
plumb line. Materials such as thread, glass, fabric, mirrors, wire, and lights
maintain a state of temporary equilibrium according to the weight and texture
he interprets, existing not as fixed, completed structures that occupy space
but as processes of constant balancing.
In this project in particular, he begins to
turn his gaze toward a universe that resembles yet differs from the world
beneath his feet. Situated at the boundary between reality and the virtual, his
works become puzzle pieces that generate a third space where microscopic and
macroscopic structures intersect.
Installation view of 《Counterforms》 ©ThisWeekendRoom
Amber Toplisek anchors images—either
photographed by the artist or randomly gathered online—onto physical substrates
such as glass, copper, lead, resin, and steel. By connecting fragmented images
and devising structures that allow a single image to extend outward, she
navigates the intervals between the static and the moving, the visible and the
invisible.
Glass, in particular—once the
photosensitive plate of early photography and now the screen that shapes
contemporary visual experience—functions as both a support and a membrane where
truth and illusion reside, as well as a boundary across which the gaze slips.
Indeterminate vantage points, blurred tones, and faint forms represent the
processes through which memories evaporate and condense, subtly revealing the
perceptual terrain the artist seeks to convey.
