Syntax Gallery is pleased to present Lidia Zhudro's first solo exhibition entitled 間 (MA). The show will feature paintings, a series of objects, and an installation by the artist.

Barn's burnt down.
Now I can see the moon.
Mizuta Masahide

Ma (間) is one of the basic Japanese cultural concepts. The ideogram ma (間) used to be written with the character 門 ('door') and the radical 月 ('moon') and depicted 'A door through the crevice of which the moonshine peeps in' (Bernhard Karlgren, 1923). It embodied the idea of a boundless world perceived through the narrow frame of a humdrum, run-of-the-mill experience. By translating it into the language of art we get a description for negative space, empty space, interval, gap, pause – a 'third' entity between two elements with a meaning of its own that is different from theirs.

Turning her gaze to the East with its terminology, the artist reflects on the potential for growing understanding through redefining the very concept of development. By interpreting development not as a linear and progressive process with a predetermined direction but as a pause, hiatus, freeze – the works closely focus on the state of ignorance/misunderstanding, which is not just a desirable but an obligatory lacuna that creates a zone of sensemaking as a basis for future new understanding.

The display captures the artist's monologue in time through the use of her diaries, journals, and old work notebooks – a personal archive undergoing a process of constant transformation, redaction, and elimination to create a lacuna, a gap, a state of mindlessness, negative space, and, simultaneously, documenting her journey. To create something new, it is necessary to unsee/delete/forget the old.