Fundus: A Schizo Society's Longing for the Armchair Psychology of Visual Cohesion (An Examination)
Ana Viktoria Dzinic
Gallery
26.09.26 - 07.11.26NıCOLETTı is pleased to announce the second solo exhibition by London-based, German artist Ana Viktoria Dzinic at the gallery, opening on Saturday 26 September (5 – 8 pm). The exhibition coincides with Dzinic’s solo presentation at Frieze London (14 – 18 October 2026, booth F32).
Titled Fundus: A Schizo Society’s Longing for the Armchair Psychology of Visual Cohesion (An Examination), the exhibition takes as a point of departure a term which, in medical jargon, refers to the base of a hollow organ, specifically the part that is farthest away from the organ’s opening. In the eye, for instance, the fundus corresponds to the interior surface of the back of the eye, opposite the lens, an area commonly associated with the blind spot. In German, fundus also denotes a storage room or inventory of theatre props, costumes and equipment.
Dzinic mobilises these meanings to examine the ideologies embedded in systems of categorisation and display of objects and images. The exhibition specifically considers the tension between the potential diversity of an individual artistic practice and the persistent desire of society (particularly the art world) for visual cohesion: the production of a recognisable aesthetic and legible bodies of work.
These ideas are explored through a large-scale storage unit containing one work from each series Dzinic produced to date. Accessible to viewers at all times, the works move between the storage structure and the gallery’s walls through three successive rotations unfolding across two rooms. Each hang unfolds through interconnected pairs: the two-dimensional work from a given series is systematically displayed alongside its adjoining video work, themselves brought into dialogue with another series to form a quartet.
The trompe-l’œil woodworks of the ‘Would Wood’ series (2026–) are placed alongside the photographic portrait paintings of Dzinic’s ‘Romantisch’ series (2025–). Army blankets bearing shipping labels from the ‘Distribution Surplus’ series (2026–) are juxtaposed with works from the ‘Propaganda and Decoration’ series (2024–), in which black and white photographs printed on velvet attempt to emulate the logic of digital filters through processes of duplication. The ‘Image, Affect, Syntax’ series (2023–), displaying image grids generated through linguistic systems, is set against the faux-bronze sculptures of the ‘Social Acceleration’ series (2026–), constructed from the cardboard packaging of tech products.
Each series establishes a distinct aesthetic regime, foregrounding the infrastructural and affective economies through which images are produced, circulated and valued. Rather than treating aesthetics as a stable or autonomous category, Dzinic examines the conditions under which images acquire authority, value and affect: the social, economic and ideological structures that determine how they are seen, classified and understood.
The exhibition’s structure makes these protocols of selection and display materially visible. Loosely referencing Andy Warhol’s Raid the Icebox show (1969–70), the V&A East Storehouse, and Haegue Yang’s Storage Piece (2003), Fundus considers storage not as a space outside exhibition-making, but as one of its constitutive conditions. The systems used to produce, classify and distribute artworks become as significant as the works themselves, reflecting contemporary technological conditions in which the process is often as significant as the object it produces.
Alongside the physical rotations of artworks, the exhibition features a Kodak Carousel that operates as a continuous, parallel apparatus of display. Known as a device for the projection and sequencing of images, the carousel evokes archival systems, institutional framing and the finite limits of exhibition space. It presents images of all the works and installation views from each hang, alongside Dzinic’s writings and illustrations, creating a second, ever-circulating register of the exhibition. By recording the exhibition as the physical installation changes, the carousel produces an image-based archive of its successive states.
The rotations will be accompanied by collective gatherings in which Dzinic and her guests reflect on the notion of resonance, drawing on German sociologist Hartmut Rosa’s thinking on the subject. With each new configuration of the exhibition, the gatherings will extend the questions raised by the gallery’s systems of display into forms of collective encounter.