Front

2026

Something keeps it apart.

No depth of field, no way out, nothing behind. A single plane, seen head-on. The edge is therefore not a border glimpsed at a distance inside a constructed space. It is the only thing there is.

This front holds at the threshold. Not stable enough to stay smooth, not unstable enough to lose all form.

The burning page. Ahead, the paper intact. In the middle, the line of fire. Behind, the ash has kept the shape of the page and is no longer a page; it comes apart at the first touch.

The line has a morphology of its own. Stepped, frayed, serrated. Never smooth, and it occupies a thickness.

There, filaments gather, nested rectangles, aligned debris, regular bands. On either side, the fields stay uniform. All the structure of the image is on that line.

The figure is gone. What remains is the construction and the instruments: a colour chart, a graduated rule, the edge of a plate. The measuring apparatus has entered the field it was measuring.

To hold the front. To stand exactly there, without giving way and without withdrawing.

A front is not waiting to give way. It advances.

Far from Equilibrium

Titre, 2026

Pigment print on Japanese paper

Title, 2026

Pigment print, 120 × 90 cm

Title, 2026

Pigment print, 120 × 90 cm

Title, 2026

Pigment print, 120 × 90 cm

Title, 2026

Pigment print, 120 × 90 cm

The ruler is being measured too.

Title, 2026

Pigment print, 120 × 90 cm

Title, 2026

Pigment print, 120 × 90 cm

Title, 2026

Pigment print, 120 × 90 cm

Title, 2026

Pigment print, 120 × 90 cm

This is how it moves.

Title, 2026

Pigment print, 120 × 90 cm

Title, 2026

Pigment print, 120 × 90 cm

The Conceptual Framework

Marginal stability.
A front holds at the point where a disturbance may as easily grow as subside, depending on barely different conditions. Not stable enough to stay smooth, not unstable enough to lose all form. This is not the instant preceding a collapse: in the literature on growth fronts, the marginally stable mode is the one a front adopts and keeps in order to advance. It is a sustained operating regime, and it is also the only one in which new form keeps appearing.

A front is not waiting to give way. It advances.

Frontality.
These images have no depth of field. No background, no way out, a single plane seen head-on. The edge is therefore not a border glimpsed at a distance inside a constructed space: it occupies the entire surface, and there is no position from which to see it side-on. The form of the image and its subject are the same thing.

Structure at the site of constraint.
The line of separation has a morphology of its own: stepped, frayed, serrated, never smooth, occupying a thickness. There, filaments gather, nested rectangles, aligned debris, regular bands. Oneither side, the fields stay uniform. Where the system is most strained, it does not come apart, it organises. The edge becomes the most worked part of the image, where it is usually what ends it.

The apparatus in the field.
The figure is gone. What remains is the construction and the instruments: colour chart, graduated rule, plate edge. What served to measure has entered what was being measured. There is no outside position left from which to observe without being part of what is observed.

The double reading of the name.
*Front* names, in physics, a surface that advances and where the transformation occurs: wave front, flame front, solidification front. It also names the line where two forces meet, where everything concentrates, and which moves: the front line, the weather front. And it names, in ordinary language, the act of holding: to hold the front is to stand exactly where something presses, without giving way and without withdrawing. All three readings are intentional. The word also names a part of the face, on the only images from which the figure has been removed. A front without a face.