#67-94 Passepartout-Passport

The dimensions of the grey areas in this work match the size of a passport within the European Union. The original number of paintings is the same as the present member states when they were made (28).

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Passepartout is a series of paintings where the composition is solely made from strips around the panel's edges.

The passe-partout is commonly a piece of cardboard around a picture with the primary function of separating it from the glass. It is a French word that means "fits all", as in a master key. Where the frame is placed outside the image field - in the real world, and thus points to the register of matter, what the psychoanalyst theory would describe as the Real, the passe-partout position is more ambiguous. It borders the image field, which with its reproducible quality, signifies the registers of language - the Imaginary (pure language) and the Symbolic (applied language), clearly inside the frame and thus part of the image but not in an obvious way. You might say it facilitates the relationship between the image (language) and reality (matter). Not like the frame itself, which merely indicates the border but more discretely and imperceptibly. Like ideology. Ideology introduces limitations that the subject perceives as natural and primordial, but that in reality is a discourse, part of language and thus can be negotiated and changed. The passe-partout is an element that makes an image of any shape, big or small, fit into the same frame. And even if it's not perceived as such, it is part of the image itself.