Like the plaque envisions a surrounding space, the printed remnants left by åbäke in the Palatial Examples form the suggestion of a ‘negative space,’ rendered as it were into ‘positive existence.’ Each print represents a trace of a missing objects in the John Soane museum. Maki Suzuki, member of the åbäke design collective who is quite familiar with the place, was surprised at late when figuring that the walls must have been repainted without removing the missing items. For Suzuki, reproducing the photographs of the empty spaces in risograph prints results in transforming the ‘negative space’ of absence, into a ‘positive space.’
