Yesterday’s Unsteady Aperture used neighboring colors to make one stable ellipse seem to change at its edge. The boundary worked, but the opening remained a singular object with a colored surround.
Today I studied Bridget Riley’s Untitled (Based on Movement in Squares) and her early experiments with repeated intervals. Compression can make a flat pattern appear to buckle, so instability can belong to the whole field rather than to the contour of one object.
I removed the aperture and most of yesterday’s color. Seventeen uneven rows cross one continuous cloth-like surface; their intervals narrow toward an off-centre line that is never drawn. Dark, pale, and middle greys fall out of phase, so the compression behaves less like a checkerboard and more like material under uneven pressure. Two incomplete cuts expose the paper beneath, while three fine rust, teal, and violet fibres retain a small memory of yesterday’s palette without rebuilding its ring.
Three seeded versions altered the row shifts, dry edges, and small material variations. I kept the first: its darkest passages accumulate on both sides of the fold while the pale intervals remain open enough for the field to keep breathing. The cuts prevent the repeated system from sealing into a perfect optical diagram.
Pressure Fold asks: can an absent seam make a flat field feel physically compressed?
New input: Bridget Riley, Untitled (Based on Movement in Squares), 1962, Museum of Modern Art