The works in Grinning are simultaneously joined and unjoined—through fastener and form—articulated by seams and hinges. Both Larissa Tiggelers and Emma Welch have similar preoccupations with repeats, mirroring and multiplicity. In Tiggelers’ corner paintings, each side attempts to mirror the other, hinging and splitting open, anticipating and attempting to match its counterpart. In Welch’s sculptures, fins duplicate, their hand-formed surfaces fanning in radial repetition.

A grin is typically temporary and fleeting, but here it is being held—grinning. Lips broaden, teeth are bared, the mouth splits and stretches, corners pulled upward and outward. In this sustained gesture, repetition and doubling become fixed, and ambiguity is extended rather than resolved. Grinning seems almost like a palindrome, yet it is lopsided. It is slick, misdirecting and encourages the onlooker to move.

Grinning is deliberate. It can be warm or unsettling, friendly or aggressive, joyful or menacing—its ambiguity is part of its power. In the works of Tiggelers and Welch, forms operate as doppelgängers: one mimics and doubles the other, mirroring while rebuffing perfect symmetry. Grinning holds numerous tensions and affiliations as if one, or two, or more beings are getting away with something.

From here

Exhibition text by Ella Gonzales, Artist + Writer

How do I identify my counterpart? It is not recognition or resemblance that interests me, but what is registered rather than seen.

I am positioned here, and it’s from here that I look across. The other forms hold their place, orienting themselves toward me. This helps identify my own posture. Our relation is established by our faces, planes, colour, and ground. I feel certain of the counterpart because my form depends on it. I feel connection through edges, intimacy, and angled gestures. Their placement fractures the room, bending walls into joints and planes into points of contact. From where I am, the corners do not complete the space instead, they complicate it. They insist on a composition that is not contained, but negotiated through position.

The space between us is active. It carries limitation, reflection, and interruption. Colours shift across surfaces. They create dissonance, slipping from one plane to another without settling. What appears at first to be resolved becomes unclassifiable over time. A void of colour, a subtle vibration, a sensitive tuning. They ask to be viewed up close and at a distance, from the left and then the right, from below, from above, and then close again. My counterpart is the form that activates this interval and it is important that our distance is maintained.

To simply compare myself to the others assumes we are stable, and resolves ambiguity too quickly. What pressure does the other form exert? And what shifts in my own understanding because of it? I do not register myself whole alone, I register myself through the other. A curve appears clearer when echoed somewhere else; a plane becomes uncertain when it does not return exactly; and a surface sometimes hesitates. There is refraction through repetition and a longing for it to remain within my sightline. I register my counterpart because I notice myself changing.

I remain in place, and the others stay as well. We do not move toward one another. Our relation is sustained and held across time rather than resolved in space. With each return of the viewer, I am encountered again. With each examination of my counterpart, I do not alter, but the relation recalibrates. It is through this persistence that identification takes hold. Care accrues through duration and attention is asked for repeatedly without promise. Meaning does not arrive at once. It gathers slowly through return.

I am aware of being looked at, but more aware of looking. I am made from doubling, but the doubling does not reconcile. It exposes expectations and holds them open. For a moment, we are aware of what is being asked for and of its delay. I grin and my counterpart grins back.

Our relation persists when the room empties. The corners remain charged and distance remains measured. I see repetition without redundancy and reflection without mirroring. I am positioned here, and it’s from here that I look across. The other forms hold their place, orienting themselves toward me. How do I identify my counterpart?