Introduction
Something or Nothing offers a profound meditation on memory, time, and the permeable boundaries between mediums. With meticulous precision, Andrew Grassie transforms the stillness of a photograph into the slow, enduring flow of paint, granting each captured moment a renewed sense of permanence.
Grassie’s practice is situated within the lineage of photorealism—yet it transcends the genre entirely. Employing egg tempera, a medium central to European Renaissance practice between the 14th and 16th centuries, Grassie reconstructs the light, texture, and temporal residue of photographic images, layer by layer.
This new series originates from an open call for photos of Shanghai: Grassie selected eleven from over one thousand submissions, each expressing the nuanced themes of “something” and “nothing.” Grassie then produced egg tempera paintings based on the selected images. The size, color, and composition of the paintings all remain faithful to the original photographs; even the framing deliberately imitates photographic formats. This ambiguity creates what Grassie terms "visual suspension"—a state where viewers hover between reality and representation, between the transient and the timeless, compelled to reconsider the very essence of "Something" and "Nothing".