To trip, to stutter or to spill something are moments in which cer-tainties briefly falter and the possible flickers into view; not as a goal, but as an irritation along the way. Even the Romantics stumbled over roots in their landscapes or table legs in their interiors, and thus over a world in transition. Their wobbling suggested a worldview that em-braced contingency, uncertainty and processuality as conditions for insight. A gesture of resistance that prophetically foreshadowed the demystification of the modern world from bohemian to fauxhemian:

The savoir-faire of the 19th century gave way to the social ascent of commerce. Influence was no longer defined by origin, attitude or courtly finesse, but by capital and the ability to navigate and adapt to emerging structures. Over time, efficiency and Taylor-esque time management replaced the savoir-vivre until the here and now, where the savoir per se seems to be dispersing. Information technologies have transformed images and language into pharmacological substances that stimulate and numb at the same time. From trippy to tragic.

Has this poetically resistant stumbling now turned into a feeling of loss, into an emoji within a reality overlaid by design, branding and corporate aesthetics? Everyday places such as shops, public transport or video games have become stages on which experiences seem to define perception. Yet it is precisely within this apparent excess and banality that a pivotal potential emerges. Surfaces can never be fully smoothed. They reveal trapdoors and in-between spaces where mean-ings shift, new connections arise and the hidden tensions of the pres-ent become visible. In these gaps, power structures, social inequalities and the underlying ruptures of a capitalist world take abstract form, betraying predefined modes of representation.

Under these circumstances, abstraction means withdrawal and expres-sion gives way to displacement. Panorama brings together five artists whose works can be read as parts of a process of transformation. Through their biographical, (art-) historical or social patination, they unfold as tableaux that shift between narrative construction and sit-uational mise-en- scène. Identification dissolves into a state of in-be-tween, where the subject appears fragmented, ambivalent and produc-tively contradictory—and becomes perceptible precisely in this state.

— Dominic Michel