Christopher Aque’s exhibition “A void” centers on Double Negative (Swapping Spit) (all works 2021), an alluring two-part sculptural installation in the form of a working fountain. In both of the identical components, water flows from a milky, kiln-formed glass surface perched atop a black rectangular box that is contained within a larger transparent acrylic basin. Evocative of New York’s many memorial fountains (in particular, Michael Arad’s lacunalike 9/11 Memorial), the liquid feeds from one half of the sculpture into the other, passing by a germicidal UV-C bulb that sanitizes the water, killing any organic matter within. In what amounts to a double entendre on the parallel ontologies of sexuality and photography, the work directly extends into the six surrounding photographic diptychs, mounted on luxurious linen passe-partout and encased in acrylic boxes. Titled either Ebb or Flow, these diptychs each pair a voyeuristic photograph of a man’s body with an image of moving water. The photographs themselves are gum bichromate prints, a process that requires each color to be individually exposed to the very same UV-C bulb used in the sculpture.

As a demure—if not latently erotic—constellation, evocative of an office lobby, the exhibition opens up a number of quietly intersecting angles of interpretation: the relation between cruising and public monuments; photography as an inherently sexual economy of exposure and containment; viral panic in relation to gay sexuality and/or Covid. (The press release offers a short reflection on the artist’s withdrawal from public space during the 2020 lockdown.) What initially feels like an overly cryptic proposition eventually sneaks up on you as almost romantic. Much like the language of urban design, Aque’s logic is only ever conveyed through atmosphere, as a series of encounters and impressions.

— Jeppe Ugelvig