#417 Height Strip

Each of the grey squares to the right is 5x5 cm. Installing the painting slightly higher than usual could give it a double function as a height strip, making it easy to evaluate the measurements of any intruder in the gallery space. Markers like this are common in any commercial facility, such as supermarkets or banks, with potential criminal activity. Surveillance is normalised in any modern society to the degree that we no longer notice it. It has become an integrated part of the background in any public space. Perhaps this is necessary, but it is meaningful to consider that such surveillance markers indicate the boundaries of society. They will be evident to anyone marginalised by these standards, such as the poor and undocumented.

The passe-partout is commonly a piece of cardboard around a picture to separate 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.