Where Art is Made and Displayed

“Whereas the gallery once transformed whatever was in it into art (and still occasionally does), with these media the process is reversed: now such media transform the gallery, insistently, on their terms.” (O’Doherty, B., 2007, p. 40)

Reading O’Doherty’s Studio and Cube really made me reflect on the separation between the space where I create and the space where I show my work. His sentence, “Every studio has to have some traffic with the outside” (O’Doherty, B., 2007, p. 21) resonated with me. For me, the studio is not only a private place of making, but also a transitional space where ideas about the public are constantly entering and being transformed.

Since the beginning of this course, I’ve been exploring how physicality, texture, and emotion are translated through material. In my practice, the place of making is often very rough, messy, layered with traces of the process, full of reused and broken elements. This contrasts with many showing spaces, especially the white cube, which often feels sterile and clean. I’ve always been aware of this tension, and I think I even use it intentionally. For example, in my Temporary Permanence installation, the rough, fragile material (newspapers) had “emotional” destruction (vandalism) marks, but then it was carefully arranged in the gallery and public settings. This tension between vulnerability and presentation is a big part of my work.

One of the strongest examples for me was showing work in the vitrines of shops in Zurich. The "studio" and "cube" merged into a new kind of space: a public street that became both a studio and exhibition site. I had to think not only how the work looked, but how it acted in the space, in dialogue with everyday objects and people just walking by.

Suddenly, a work that was never meant to be framed had to be reframed, literally and conceptually, to speak with its surroundings. That taught me a lot about context and how much the showing space changes the meaning of the artwork.

I also think about my studio as a space of resistance, where I fight against aesthetic polish and try to stay honest to materials and emotion. But that honesty still needs to be translated to an audience, and this translation happens in the exhibition space. I learned this especially while preparing for the virtual exhibition. I was trying to simulate some sense of “traffic” between the private and the public by choosing images, editing texts, and deciding how to lead the viewer’s eye across the screen. It wasn’t just documentation; it was a kind of second making.

In my practice statement and plans, I kept returning to the idea of gut feeling, of visceral response to materials. That’s why I was originally drawn to the restaurant as a showing space; it felt like a place of emotion, of bodily experience. But when I realised the concept had moved too far into separate from my practice idea, I started searching again for spaces where the rawness of my process could speak clearly. I thought of empty buildings, places being reconstructed, spaces that hold memory but are also becoming something else. This fits my work better, as my practice is deeply tied to transformation, temporality, and fragility.

I’ve started thinking about how the energy moves between my studio and the showing space. Sometimes it’s a direct line, fast and urgent, especially when preparing for commissions or quick installs. Sometimes it’s a spiral, as when I revisit older works in new contexts. I’m starting to think of my practice not in two separate spaces, but as a continuum where ideas are always shifting between private making and public showing.

The ideas from Brian Massumi about affect and sensation remind me that the studio is not just a space of thinking, but a place where the body knows something before the mind does. And the exhibition space is where that body knowledge gets translated into something others can feel too.

Bibliography and references

1.     O’Doherty, B. (2007) Studio and cube: on the relationship between where art is made and where art is displayed. New York: Columbia University.