A Figure in Open Space
What changes when a figure has room around it?
Look at the space around a form before concentrating on its features. This short gallery moves from a landscape-like image and a softly layered head toward small silhouettes, larger figures and dark surroundings. Compare the amount of open ground with the scale of each subject. The relationship can change even when a character remains easy to recognize.
Where the Figure Begins
The exhibition opens with a work offering almost no figure — only a field of organic forms and a lit center — before introducing a figure whose edges actively dissolve into its ground.
NNOTB #20
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View & watch drawingRounded forms press in from all edges while a pale center holds open; there is no stable figure here, only a field in tension with itself — establishing the question of where a figure ends and its ground begins.
NNOTB #115
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View & watch drawingA hat-and-face emerge from overlapping pale circles; the figure is present but its outline trades places with the background, answering nnxyz nnotb #20's field-only tension by introducing a figure that cannot fully separate from its ground.
Where nnxyz nnotb #20 offers only a crowded field with a lit center and no clear figure, nnxyz nnotb #115 introduces a figure — but one whose edges dissolve into the same kind of diffuse, overlapping forms.
Silhouette Against Open Color
Three works strip the figure to a flat black shape set against a single saturated ground, showing how much a solid form can hold when surrounded by unbroken color.
NNOTB #212
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View & watch drawingA black dog silhouette stands in the lower-right corner of a vast blue field; yellow zigzag marks radiate from it, the only marks of energy in an otherwise empty expanse.
After nnxyz nnotb #115's dissolved edges, nnxyz nnotb #212 moves to the opposite extreme — a hard black silhouette with no ambiguity at its border, set against a flat blue field that offers it almost no company.
NNOTB #130
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View & watch drawingA small black figure raises one arm in a yellow field that fills the entire canvas; wavy lines fan from its head, but the yellow above remains unbroken and vast.
NNOTB #101
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View & watch drawingA black snail form rests on a black ground strip; mixed straight and zigzag lines burst from behind its shell into yellow, yet the large empty upper field above makes the radiating marks feel small against the surrounding space.
Both nnxyz nnotb #212 and nnxyz nnotb #130 use a flat black silhouette against a single saturated ground, but nnxyz nnotb #130 centers its figure lower and surrounds it with even more uninterrupted field above.
nnxyz nnotb #130's figure reaches upward into open yellow; nnxyz nnotb #101's snail form turns inward, its shell enclosing a spiral while the same yellow field above remains unbroken and dominant.
Figures That Reach Outward
Two works show figures extending into the picture plane — one gripping an object across open ground, one whose dense marks fill a framed interior while light drifts outside it.
NNOTB #146
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View & watch drawingA standing figure extends one arm across the composition to grip a tangle of lines leading to a glowing red disc; the open pastel washes behind it keep the ground light, making the figure's horizontal reach the dominant spatial event.
Where nnxyz nnotb #101's snail is closed and low, nnxyz nnotb #146's figure stands upright and extends an arm across the width of the image, actively measuring the space around it.
NNOTB #97
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View & watch drawingA dense figure sits inside a dark inner rectangle while soft light circles drift across the warm outer field; the visible frame within the image divides the surrounding space into an inner zone of dense marks and an outer zone of diffuse glow.
nnxyz nnotb #146's figure stands in open, undivided space; nnxyz nnotb #97 introduces a literal frame within the image, splitting the field into a dark interior and a glowing exterior.
Figure Against Darkness
The final work removes the open field almost entirely, placing a figure against near-total black so that its own surface becomes the only available light.
NNOTB #26
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View & watch drawingA large skeletal figure fills the frame against deep black; white and orange lines trace its limbs and skull from within, so the figure carries its own light rather than drawing it from any surrounding field.
nnxyz nnotb #97's figure sits inside a dark rectangle with a glowing field visible beyond it; nnxyz nnotb #26 removes that outer glow entirely, leaving the figure surrounded by black with only its own traced edges providing light.
One more look
Return to one of the smaller silhouettes after looking at a larger figure. What does the extra surrounding space make you notice?