Amorce – Paper, Index, Trace

“I contaminate my surroundings with trace.”

—Uri Aran

In Notes on the Index (1977), Rosalind Krauss distinguishes the index from other types of signs. Unlike the symbol, which is arbitrary, or the icon, which functions through resemblance, the index arises through contact. It is the footprint pressed into the sand, the shadow cast on a wall, the bruise or the stain. Indexes are “marks or traces of a particular cause, and that cause is what they refer to.” They are not representations of something absent but physical consequences of a presence.

This exhibition expands Krauss’s reflection toward works on paper. Paper is approached not as a neutral support but as an indexical surface—closer to a sandbank or a photographic plate. Every inscription—graphite, ink, stain, fold, or pressure—bears witness to contact, to a gesture, to an event. From this perspective, these traces are not only expressive or communicative but also archival: they record the body’s condition of being in the world.

Amorce – Paper, Index, Trace develops an exploration of paper as a surface of recording, of the index as a consequence of bodily presence, and of the trace as its persistent residue. Paper, then, is less a passive support than a porous skin. Its fibers receive indentations and folds, becoming both surface and memory, where the body, the tool, and the environment imprint themselves in ways both deliberate and involuntary.

To look at these works is to encounter more than form: they are thresholds where presence is registered and transformed, where the ephemeral endures as memory, impression, and touch. The weight of a hand, the rhythm of breath, the pause of attention—each leaves its mark. Works on paper embody this condition, gathering traces that reveal not only intention but also that which exceeds control.

— Third Born