Contour Fatigue

Sophia Al Maria & Lydia Ourahmane, Adriano Costa, Namio Harukawa, Jasper Marsalis, Jonathan Okoronkwo, Margaret Raspé, Michael E. Smith, Alessandra Spranzi

Emalin is pleased to present Contour Fatigue, a group exhibition.

To be contained is to be formed in relation to an edge: a threshold that marks what is held in and what is kept out. But containment rarely holds – it fatigues, often slowly; not always through spectacle, but through accumulation. Contour Fatigue brings together nine artists whose work turns toward these sites where containment falters. Through sculpture, installation, painting and video, alongside historic drawings by the Japanese fetish artist Namio Harukawa, the exhibition explores how life can exceed the forms devised to hold it. Rather than rupture, we experience oversaturation: a surface too full to reflect, say, or a rhythm too worn to signify. Drift, deformation—where matter slides away from its form and begins to pool elsewhere.