Horror Vacui

TOA Presents is thrilled to announce Horror Vacui, a group exhibition organized by Amir H. Fallah (Los Angeles) and Mark Schoening (Minneapolis), featuring both artists alongside Amie Cunat, Asad Faulwell, Wendell Gladstone, Sherin Guirguis, Justine Hill, Dennis Koch and Geoffrey Todd Smith.

Translated from Latin as the “fear of empty space,” the term Horror Vacui first became associated with art and design when Italian critic Mario Praz used it to address the Victorian-era obsession with visual clutter. Within contemporary visual art, it names an artist’s compulsion to load the entirety of a picture plane with detail. In the act of leaving nothing vacant, our fear of vacancy is put to rest.

Yet what we choose to fill space with can appear vastly different from wall to wall, edge to edge. While artists in the exhibition are tethered to a shared language of pattern and color, each diverges into their own dialect. Spanning arabesque tessellations, uncanny tableaus and optical illusions, the works in Horror Vacui challenge our visual perception, reminding us of how fickle the eye can be.

Image Left:  Amir H. Fallah, Overseer of the Power Chord, 2013, Acrylic, collage, colored pencil on paper mounted to canvas, 60 x 48 inches

Image Right:  Mark Schoening, Variation 42077, 2021, 20 unique sculptures set within a custom shelving unit, Latex on laser cut mdf, 3D printed PLA, sumi ink, birch dowels and steel fasteners, 4 x 47 x 62 inches