designboom · Creativity & design

Formafantasma on Exhibition Design: Seeking Tension and Challenging Neutrality

Formafantasma views exhibition design as relational, focusing on the interplay between artworks, architecture, and visitors. Their research-driven approach seeks 'tension'—moments where elements don't perfectly align.

Their process integrates research and design, examining artworks, context, and display conventions. They challenge the "white cube" as neutral, arguing familiar elements are designed choices. Their approach adapts to each project.

The studio aims to make exhibition relationships more visible or complex by identifying spatial conditions. They question display history and how materials influence perception.

For the 2026 Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale, they translated curatorial ideas about movement into spatial conditions using textile partitions. This integrates conceptual and technical questions.

Formafantasma avoids choreographing visitor movement, preferring to establish conditions and possibilities. They create structures offering orientation without dictating interpretation.

They describe the artwork-setting relationship as a 'temporary ecology,' where all elements interact. This rejects exhibition architecture as mere background.

Their Oltre Terra exhibition blurred content and display, showing how design can articulate an argument. This aligns with their practice of exposing systems and conventions.

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