Two Sides of a Face
How does a face hold together when its two sides differ?
Look at the two sides of a head separately before returning to the whole. Differences in eye shape, height, color and surrounding marks can be slight or pronounced. Follow those variations across less divided faces and more contrasting halves. Mouths, contours and repeated lines supply further ways to compare how the features relate.
One Eye Open, One Eye Not
These faces announce their asymmetry through a single sharp contrast: one eye rendered with care, the other crossed out, cancelled, or sealed. The split is immediate and frontal.
NNOTB #271
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View & watch drawingThe wide concentric left eye and the crossed-out right socket state the exhibition's central problem in its most direct form.
NNOTB #184
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View & watch drawingA bold red X dominates the right cheek while the left eye socket remains intact, making cancellation a large structural element rather than a small mark.
NNOTB #125
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View & watch drawingA yellow cross on the left eye zone and a red slash on the right assign a different negation mark to each side, so neither eye escapes the cancellation logic.
nnxyz nnotb #271 crosses out one eye with hatched marks; nnxyz nnotb #184 replaces that gesture with a hard red X, enlarging the erasure across the whole right side.
nnxyz nnotb #184 places one X on one side only; nnxyz nnotb #125 gives each eye its own cancellation symbol, doubling the split across the face.
NNOTB #162
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View & watch drawingOne socket is open and ringed with petal shapes; the other is sealed by a red X — the crossed-out logic now set against a face that contains a smaller framed face inside it.
nnxyz nnotb #125 cancels both eyes with flat symbols; nnxyz nnotb #162 restores one eye to full openness, making the X on the other side read as a deliberate contrast rather than a system applied to both.
Spiral Against Flat
The asymmetry shifts from cancellation to construction: one eye built from coiling lines, the other from a flat fill or simple disc, the two marks disagreeing on how an eye should be made.
NNOTB #178
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View & watch drawingA wide blue-white spiral on the left faces a compact red-orange rosette on the right — two entirely different mark systems sharing the same face.
nnxyz nnotb #162 pairs an open petal eye with a crossed one; nnxyz nnotb #178 replaces the X with a dense rosette, so both sides are now active but still built from incompatible marks.
NNOTB #259
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View & watch drawingA dark inward spiral on the left and a wide outlined eye on the right pull attention in opposite directions across a yellow-gold face.
NNOTB #253
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View & watch drawingA large spiral eye on the right and a smaller flat-striped eye on the left sit above a mouth traced in gold zigzag stitching, the two eye marks as different as coil and comb.
nnxyz nnotb #178 keeps both eye forms compact; nnxyz nnotb #259 stretches the contrast — one eye collapses inward, the other opens wide into a drawn outline.
nnxyz nnotb #259 sets spiral against outline on a warm ground; nnxyz nnotb #253 replaces the outline eye with a flat striped form, and the pale ground makes the contrast between the two sockets starker.
NNOTB #190
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View & watch drawingThe left side is buried under layered scribble where an eye might be; the right opens into a tight spiral aimed at a red dot — the most extreme version of the buried-versus-revealed contrast.
NNOTB #140
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View & watch drawingOne eye is a deep wound of spiral lines; the other is a flat crosshatched shape — the spiral-versus-flat contrast in its most compressed, locked form.
nnxyz nnotb #253 gives each eye a legible form; nnxyz nnotb #190 removes legibility from the left side entirely, replacing it with accumulated mark-making.
nnxyz nnotb #190 buries one side under scribble; nnxyz nnotb #140 replaces that scribble with a tight crossed shape, making the contrast between the two sides feel more confrontational.
NNOTB #45
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View & watch drawingA coiled spiral on the left and a crosshatched rectangle on the right sit at different heights, giving the face a stacked structure built from two incompatible geometries.
NNOTB #230
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View & watch drawingA golden disc eye and a concentric teal loop refuse to mirror each other; red bars slice the brow above them, adding a hard horizontal band to the organic asymmetry below.
nnxyz nnotb #140 keeps both eye zones at roughly the same level; nnxyz nnotb #45 places them at different heights, so the asymmetry becomes spatial as well as formal.
nnxyz nnotb #45 uses a warm amber ground to hold its mismatched eyes; nnxyz nnotb #230 introduces a cool grey-green ground and a hard red bar, making the split feel more structural.
Field Against Face
These works add a third element: the surrounding field presses inward, and the face must hold its asymmetry against that external density. The internal split and the outer marks work on each other.
NNOTB #222
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View & watch drawingA tightly wound right eye and a loose scrawled left eye sit inside a head that the diagonal striped background pushes against with equal visual weight.
nnxyz nnotb #230 has a flat, contained ground; nnxyz nnotb #222 surrounds its mismatched eyes with diagonal stripes that press in from every edge.
NNOTB #282
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View & watch drawingRadiating blue lines converge from all sides onto a face whose two eyes are ringed in different colors; the background's agitation and the face's asymmetry reinforce each other.
NNOTB #240
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View & watch drawingA black mask holds a red spiral and a blue spiral — mismatched by color — while crossed bands of yellow, grey, and red pack the surrounding field with equal density.
nnxyz nnotb #222's background stripes run parallel; nnxyz nnotb #282's lines radiate inward, so the pressure feels directed at the face rather than merely surrounding it.
nnxyz nnotb #282's background radiates outward from the face; nnxyz nnotb #240's field is horizontal bands that neither radiate nor recede, pressing the mask flat against them.
NNOTB #192
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View & watch drawingTwo spiral forms — one tight, one loose — sit above a red bar and a stepped white border; the rigid geometry of the surround presses against the organic asymmetry of the eye pair.
NNOTB #163
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View & watch drawingA red crosshatched left eye and a pink spiral right eye sit inside a broadly modeled head; the warm ochre ground holds the restless surface marks without fully containing them.
nnxyz nnotb #240's background is all-over bands; nnxyz nnotb #192 introduces a hard geometric border on one side only, so the surrounding pressure is itself asymmetric.
nnxyz nnotb #192's surround is rigid and geometric; nnxyz nnotb #163's surrounding lines are loose and multidirectional, so the pressure feels less like a wall and more like a general crowding.
NNOTB #286
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View & watch drawingA skull with one layered socket and one flat fill sits inside a dense tangle of looping lines that press close to its outline on all sides, making the external pressure visible as a surrounding mass.
NNOTB #237
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View & watch drawingA dark spiked circle holds a crossed blue eye and a green rectangle eye; yellow loops crowd the background without resolving, keeping the surrounding space as restless as the face inside it.
nnxyz nnotb #163's warm ground softens the surrounding marks; nnxyz nnotb #286's line tangle is cool and uniform, closing off every gap between the skull and its field.
nnxyz nnotb #286's surrounding tangle is dense and uniform; nnxyz nnotb #237's background loops are looser and more scattered, so the pressure feels less like a wall and more like noise.
Ornament and Asymmetry
Several faces add crowns, halos, or radiating borders that frame the uneven eyes in something ceremonial. The ornament does not resolve the split — it draws attention to it.
NNOTB #220
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View & watch drawingA spiked crown of black, purple, and yellow rises above two mismatched spiral eyes; the ceremonial headpiece and the uneven eyes sit in the same image without one explaining the other.
nnxyz nnotb #237's crown is jagged points that read as alarm; nnxyz nnotb #220's crown is more elaborate with added color, strengthening the ceremonial quality even as the asymmetry below it persists.
NNOTB #294
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View & watch drawingA flat-topped hat caps a face split between yellow and cold teal, with two mismatched eyes below it; white-outlined hands at the edges add a further gestural element.
NNOTB #143
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View & watch drawingA skull form wears yellow-gold scalloped rings around each socket — the left a plain dark oval, the right a grid of crossing lines — decorative borders that frame the asymmetry rather than hiding it.
nnxyz nnotb #220's crown rises from the head; nnxyz nnotb #294's hat sits flat on top, a different kind of headgear that reads as costume rather than crown.
nnxyz nnotb #294's hat is a flat structural cap above the face; nnxyz nnotb #143's scalloped rings are applied directly to the eye sockets, so the ornament is closer to the asymmetry it frames.
NNOTB #217
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View & watch drawingA circular form ringed by grey-tipped ovals and radiating yellow marks frames two mismatched eye forms — one daisy-ringed, one a spiral target — inside a halo of outward-pointing shapes.
NNOTB #224
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View & watch drawingJagged yellow borders around each mismatched socket echo the zigzag teeth below, linking the eye asymmetry to the mouth in a single decorative system that still does not resolve the split.
nnxyz nnotb #143's decorative rings are tight to the sockets; nnxyz nnotb #217's radiating marks extend far beyond the face, making the ceremonial frame the dominant visual fact.
nnxyz nnotb #217's radiating marks push outward; nnxyz nnotb #224's jagged borders stay close to the face, tightening the ornament back around the features.
The Face as Assembled Object
The final group treats the face as a constructed thing — features locked in separate frames, color patches ignoring outlines, asymmetry a condition of how the parts were put together.
NNOTB #279
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View & watch drawingEach feature is locked inside its own framed zone — sun-circle eye, spiral eye, boxed mouth — as though the face were a cabinet of separate compartments sharing a boundary.
nnxyz nnotb #224's face is unified by its decorative system; nnxyz nnotb #279 breaks the face into discrete framed zones, so the asymmetry becomes structural rather than ornamental.
NNOTB #250
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View & watch drawingTwo mismatched orange eyes burn above a gridded mouth; striped limbs dangle at the edges, giving the face a puppet-like quality that extends the assembled feeling beyond the head itself.
NNOTB #278
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View & watch drawingA flat pink outline holds a tight red spiral and a sun-ring eye; a coiled white rod extends from the mouth, adding a mechanical component alongside the organic marks as an equal part of the assembly.
nnxyz nnotb #279's compartments are tightly framed within the face; nnxyz nnotb #250's limbs extend beyond the body, so the assembled quality spills outside the face's boundary.
nnxyz nnotb #250's extra parts are limbs; nnxyz nnotb #278's extra part is a rod at the mouth, shifting the assembled quality from puppet to something more wired.
NNOTB #293
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View & watch drawingColor patches float free of the drawn outlines, so the face reads as two overlapping systems — one drawn, one painted — sharing a space without fully merging; the oversized left eye and smaller right eye make the mismatch visible at the level of drawing itself.
NNOTB #223
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View & watch drawingA tight white spiral and a looping pink flower mark two eye zones inside a large outlined form; wave lines pile up inside and outside the boundary, so the face and its field are made from the same marks.
nnxyz nnotb #278's assembly is additive, with parts attached; nnxyz nnotb #293's assembly is layered, with drawn and painted systems occupying the same space independently.
nnxyz nnotb #293's two systems stay within the face outline; nnxyz nnotb #223's marks spill beyond it, dissolving the boundary between the assembled face and the space around it.
NNOTB #209
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View & watch drawingA coiling spiral on the left and a jagged triangular tangle on the right are built from opposite geometries; the face pushes to the frame edges, and the bared teeth below read as the one fixed point in an otherwise unresolved assembly.
NNOTB #260
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View & watch drawingDense scribble lines pile up differently around each eye — one heavily shadowed, one sitting higher with a pale surround — while surrounding color bursts feel raw and separate from the face, an honest contrast to the more structured assemblies preceding it.
nnxyz nnotb #223's boundary dissolves into its field; nnxyz nnotb #209 reasserts a strong outer edge while keeping the interior split between two incompatible geometries.
nnxyz nnotb #209 holds its form through a strong outer edge; nnxyz nnotb #260 has no such containment — the face pushes to the picture edge and the surrounding marks feel unresolved, ending the gallery on a note of open asymmetry.
One more look
After comparing both sides, choose a feature that links them. Does it reduce the difference or make it more apparent?