There are things we notice immediately. Others emerge only when our gaze lingers. Sometimes a subtle change in material, scale, or perspective is enough for the familiar to cease being self-evident.
It is within this unstable territory that (In)Visible Shift unfolds—a meeting between the artistic practices of Claudia-Maria Luenig and Elena Panayotova, and the result of more than two decades of professional dialogue between the two artists.
The title does not describe a condition but a movement. A shift is an almost imperceptible change—the moment when the eye still recognises a form, yet is no longer entirely certain of its meaning. The image remains familiar while simultaneously beginning to appear different. A line becomes space, material transforms the meaning of form, and space itself ceases to function as a neutral backdrop, becoming an integral part of the work.
The artistic practices of Claudia-Maria Luenig and Elena Panayotova differ in their visual language and approach to material, yet they converge in their shared interest in the boundaries of perception. In both practices, what is visible is never fixed or final. It changes according to distance, context, material, and the viewer’s attention.
For Claudia-Maria Luenig, the line is simultaneously gesture, trace, and structure. It may remain on a surface, but it may also leave it, acquire physical presence, and enter real space. In this way, the boundaries between drawing, object, and installation become fluid. Form emerges not only from the material itself but also from the spaces between it, from light and shadow, from the place the work occupies, and from the viewer’s movement around it.
In Elena Panayotova’s practice, recognisable images and cultural symbols undergo a different kind of transformation. She works with a wide range of materials and visual codes, removing them from their familiar contexts and placing them in new relationships. The familiar remains recognisable, yet it ceases to be unambiguous. Between image, material, and context, subtle displacements emerge, opening the possibility for multiple interpretations.
It is precisely here that the two artistic positions meet—not in the similarity of forms, but in the very act of transformation.
In one practice, the line moves from image into space; in the other, the familiar image drifts away from its original meaning. In both cases, the work cannot be exhausted by what we see at first glance. It demands movement of the eye, a change of perspective, and a return to what has already been seen.
Thus, (In)Visible Shift does not oppose the visible and the invisible as two separate realities. Instead, the exhibition explores the threshold between them—that brief moment when one begins to pass into the other.
It is also a space for the viewer. Perception is never passive. Seeing depends on memory, experience, and the expectations we bring with us. The same work may be recognised immediately and understood much later—or remain open, resisting any definitive interpretation.
Perhaps this is where the "invisible" of the exhibition truly resides.
Not necessarily in what is hidden, but in what is present before our eyes and reveals itself only gradually.
To see does not necessarily mean to have truly seen.
