Justin Urbach, Index I (Osaka), 2026

2026

Medium

Riso print on Japanese Torinoko paper

Dimensions

21 × 29.7 cm

Edition

Edition of 10 + 2AP

Status

In Gallery Collection

Collect24 Art ID

C24-156087

“Index I (Osaka)” (2026) emerges on the surface of the urban image space. LED walls—those ubiquitous carriers of commercial communication in public space—are scanned with a handheld device, thereby stripped of their intended function. What is designed as an advertising medium becomes a surface for capture; what is meant to transmit becomes receptive. The scanning process generates interferences between the pixel grid of the displays and the reading grid of the device—an image that exists neither in the display nor in the scanner alone, but only in the moment of their collision. The captured motif—a nature scene, slightly blurred, still in motion—exists only in this single instant. It is not an archive of nature; it is an archive of images of nature, as filtered through commercial displays, urban surfaces, and technical transmission. What remains is the trace of a trace. Across multiple cities worldwide, a growing archive of these fleeting collisions takes shape—each city a different grid. The separately printed color layers, black and orange, overlap on paper without fully aligning. The material absorbs the ink unevenly, making the layering physically visible. Each of the ten prints bears the subtle variations inevitably produced by the analog printing process.