Bricks ofboundaries (2025) are part of, A Foot Between the Door, the first solo exhibition by Benjamin Francis at the gallery. The open editions are aside The Smell of Boundaries (2025), a work that pauses the visitor upon entering the exhibition space, a large-scale installation that explores the visceral, almost instinctual response one has to dirt and cleanliness. Dirt is something one is conditioned to be repulsed by, not necessarily through rational understanding, but through deep-seated social and biological instincts. Cleanliness is more than hygiene; it is a ritual that purifies a space, setting it apart from dirt and contamination. This distinction is not only physical but also symbolic.
Francis plays with transparency and opacity and befouls his works with greasy fingerprints, petroleum jelly, mold-like overgrowth, dead branches and fish eyes; materials that clash with the sterile, hyper-regulated confinements that hold them. They expose the tension between organic chaos and imposed order and act as metaphors for bodies existing outside the norm, resisting erasure in certain settings. A Foot Between the Door challenges the audience to confront these borderlands: between inside and outside, purity and contamination, life and decay.
