Andrew Grassie The Blocked Exit, 2025

The work is from a series Andrew Grassie especially conceived for his 2025 solo presentation at Fotografiska Shanghai. The works are executed with tempera, a technique associated with pre-Renaissance panel paintings anteceding the development of oil paint.

Grassie devised a strategy in which visitors to the museum were given disposable cameras with instructions to photograph whatever they felt represented the words “something” or “nothing.” From over a thousand images collected, he selected just a dozen to explore the inherent complexities of expressing these abstract ideas—treating painting as a means of re-seeing, revisiting, and reframing the intentions embedded in another’s gaze.