Dan Perjovschi uses visual space to create narratives on current topics, in a playful manner, but understandable to anyone who grasps the context in question. In the work She, from 2024, in the space between the letter S and the letters HE, the artist uses the famous phrase “you are here” to show, on the one hand, the distance between the two personal pronouns (she/he), which actually reflects the division of society through the primacy of patriarchy and sexist policies, and on the other hand, it may also be a subtle reference to the fact that regardless of our identity, in the beginning we all “were” inside a human body that corresponds to the traditional view of the idea of woman and, implicitly, to the pronoun she. In the work Politics (US Wall), the wall built between Mexico and the USA is brought into discussion, a wall that Dan Perjovschi points out does not only create a territorial-geographical separation between the two countries, but becomes a barrier between members of the same society. Within the artwork, this is signaled through the partial symmetry between the two halves of the paper: the left side shows the “wall” between US and Mexico, where US stands for United States, while on the right side US is used as a pronoun, and the “wall” is placed between the two letters, a sign of division.

In the case of Bogdan Vlăduță, in his works about Bucharest, a clearly defined latent space predominates. The artist illustrates Romania’s capital in an almost archaeological manner (given also the comparison with Rome, which he himself claims as the inspiration for this series of paintings), the general aspect being that of an abandoned city, but not post-apocalyptic, rather rediscovered in a ruined form, which could bring it closer to mythical Rome. Bogdan Vlăduță explores these latent spaces, rendering them with the help of a very dark color palette, with black dominating and revealing the ossified aspect of the city. For the artist, this ossification is not a glorious one, in which the ruins, like Roman statues and buildings, recall the glory of Rome, but a sickly, pathological one, with a liminal aesthetic.

These are just two examples of artists for whom the latent space within works functions as a resonance box where layers of meaning can generate new interpretations, in agreement with the inner universes of the viewers.

Latent Space as an Act of Mediation

The curator becomes the one who configures the latent space. The selection of works, their positioning, the silences between them, the narrative flow—all of these are acts of constructing what is not directly stated but deeply influences the message of the exhibition.

At the 2022 Venice Biennale, curated by Cecilia Alemani under the title The Milk of Dreams, the space between the works, understood not only physically but also conceptually, became a territory charged with new meanings, shaped by the pandemic crisis and recent social tensions. The visceral-mechanical installations of the artist Mire Lee or the organic interventions of Delcy Morelos reactivated these latent spaces of bodily encounter, transforming the void between works into an affective field, where the absences of the pandemic past are rewritten into fragile but intense presences. The Sámi Pavilion extended this logic of spaces between works, bringing to the center of the exhibition indigenous and marginalized voices that not only occupy but also claim the exhibition space as a site of resistance. In the same register, the Canadian project Your Restroom Is a Battleground converted everyday spaces, invisible through habit, into critical platforms where social inequalities become visible through a latent curatorial gesture. Thus, the space between works is no longer a simple interval, but becomes a poetic, ethical, and political tension field, revealing for the new forms of post-crisis art.

Similarly, we can think of the placement of Lucio Fontana’s works in the exhibition at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, where the curatorial strategy carefully reflected the artist’s intention to transcend the conventional pictorial surface. Fontana, through his Concetto Spaziale series, did not merely want to perforate the canvas, but to reconfigure the very idea of space in art, transforming the surface into a three-dimensional field in which the viewer is invited to contemplate both what is seen and what is hidden. In this sense, the arrangement of the works in the museum is not at all random—the creations are placed in such a way that the space between them becomes an integral part of the work. These physical gaps between canvases function as “latent spaces,” zones of tension and breathing that amplify the violent but calculated gesture of the artist. Thus, the curatorial space becomes an extension of the artistic gesture, and the viewer is invited to navigate among the works as through a force field, where absence and presence become equally important.

Latent space is not just a gap between works, but an essential curatorial tool—a silent territory that mediates between viewer, artwork, and context, often revealing the most profound meanings of an exhibition.

Latent space is more than just an absence between forms—it is an active territory, charged with possibilities, a silent stage where the essence of unseen meanings is performed. Whether we encounter it within works, around them, or between them, it functions as a subtle presence that defines the rhythm and breath of the artistic act. In the hands of the artist, it becomes a resonance chamber of memory and subjectivity. In the hands of the curator, it becomes a tool of conceptual, ethical, and poetic articulation. The exploration of this space—unseen but felt—compels us to relate differently to what we look at, listen to, and understand.

Especially in contemporary art, where meaning is no longer given but constructed in relation to absences, latent space perhaps becomes the truest mirror of the world we live in.

Ph.D. Researcher Andrei FĂȘIE

Mark Rothko, No. 14, 1960