All works

Disappear Here

Exhibition · 2018 · RIBA Architecture Gallery, London

An exhibition on perspective and other kinds of space. Drawings selected from the RIBA collections and Drawing Matter are brought into an installation of painted geometry and mirrors. Their vanishing points organise the gallery hang, connecting individual works into a larger spatial drawing. The exhibition explores how perspective shapes both representations and the world we build.

The vanishing points of individual drawings determine the positions of neighbouring works. The wall painting extends their space into the gallery.

Fields of blue stretch around the gallery, bringing flat surfaces and the illusion of depth into the same view.

Works from RIBA and Drawing Matter bring different periods and drawing practices into a shared spatial arrangement.

A painted opening sits beside the framed works. Its flat geometry suggests a recess while remaining part of the wall.

The painted geometry continues across a corner, connecting drawings on separate walls within one composition.

A closer view brings the marks and construction of individual drawings back into focus within the larger installation.

Different sizes, formats and viewpoints meet within a single arrangement of frames and painted space.

Two works occupy different heights, with the diagonal division of the wall joining the space around them.

At the edge of the installation, painted surfaces meet a mirrored base and a small framed drawing.

Black lines wrap around a white faceted form, carrying a drawing grid over its top, inner and outer surfaces.

A second viewpoint changes the relation between the grid and the object’s folded outline.

Visitors and their reflections enter the composition, bringing moving bodies into the exhibition’s constructed views.

A mirrored column repeats visitors, drawings and painted walls, extending the exhibition into reflected space.

Disappear Here: Exhibition view with blue perspective wall painting, mirrored column and gridded seat

Photography: Max Creasy

Disappear Here: A sequence of blue doorways seen along a single axis

Drawings in the exhibition

RIBA Collections and Drawing Matter.

Photography: Andy Matthews

Étienne-Louis Boullée: Metropolitan cathedral, 1782

H. T. Cadbury-Brown & Ernő Goldfinger: 27-storey office block, Moorgate, 1955

Colen Campbell: Wilton House and grounds, 1719

Max Clendinning: Conservatory, Cadogan Square, 1979

Thomas Furbor: Royal Hospital, Greenwich, on fire, 1779

Giovanni Carlo Galli Bibiena: Stage set for La Clemenza di Tito, 1755

James Gowan: Isle of Wight House, 1956–58

Raymond Loewy: Wardroom Concept 4, 1969–75

Edwin Lutyens: Memorial to the Missing, St Quentin, 1923

Jean-Charles Moreux: Studio interior, 1925

Andrea Palladio: Cornice in perspective, 1560

Joseph Potter: Interior, Plas Newydd, 1820

Sangallo (attributed): Illustration to Vitruvius, Book III, chapter 2, c.1530–45

John Smythson: House with a castellated wing, 1610; Pool, Bolsover Castle, 1610

Superstudio: Graz, 1971; Un difficile passaggio attraverso gli specchi, 1968–69

William Talman: Trianon pavilion, Thames Ditton, 1699

Anonymous, Bolognese School: Ceiling with columns and coffered arches, 1700

Anonymous, English: Entablature with vanishing point, 1700

Anonymous: Star-bastion fort plan, 18th century (date uncertain)

Disappear Here: Drawings hung at different heights on a blue geometric wall painting

Installation view

Photography: Max Creasy

Disappear Here: Wide view of two adjoining walls painted in shades of blue

Installation view

Photography: Andy Matthews

Disappear Here: A group of historic architectural drawings against the blue wall painting

Drawings and painted perspective

Photography: Max Creasy

Disappear Here: A painted blue opening beside framed architectural drawings

Painted opening

Photography: Andy Matthews

Disappear Here: Perspective painting and framed drawings continuing across a gallery corner

Installation view

Photography: Andy Matthews

Disappear Here: Detail of framed architectural drawings against the blue wall

Drawings in the exhibition, detail

Photography: Max Creasy

Disappear Here: Seven framed architectural drawings arranged on a blue wall

Drawings and painted perspective

Photography: Andy Matthews

Disappear Here: Two framed works separated by a diagonal boundary between pale and dark blue

Drawings and wall painting, detail

Photography: Andy Matthews

Disappear Here: A small framed drawing at the junction of pale blue wall surfaces and a mirrored base

Installation detail

Photography: Max Creasy

Disappear Here: White faceted ring-shaped seat marked with a black grid

Perspective model

Photography: Max Creasy

Disappear Here: White gridded seat with angular sides seen from a second viewpoint

Perspective model, alternate view

Photography: Max Creasy

Disappear Here: Visitors looking at drawings with their legs reflected in the mirrored wall base

Installation view with visitors

Photography: Andy Matthews

Disappear Here: Visitors and gallery drawings reflected in a mirrored column

Installation view, mirrored column

Photography: Andy Matthews

For exhibitions, acquisitions and commissions: [email protected].

Opening the files…

Selected works

50 works in 4 files. More to come.

About Sam Jacob

Sam Jacob makes work that explores the strange lives of familiar things. His work draws on the images, objects and fragments of history through which we construct ideas of nature, culture and ourselves.

Across drawings, objects, installations and curatorial projects, he examines how architecture and material things embody social and cultural ideas, how ‘fictions’ become ‘real’, how ideas become things, and how things become ideas.

Collage, copying and processes of reconstruction are central to this practice, which also moves between digital processes and physical materiality. These transformations and translations bring both humour and unease to questions of memory, value and meaning.

Solo exhibitions include Against Nature (2023) and Empire of Ice Cream (2019) at Betts Project, London, and Disappear Here at the RIBA Architecture Gallery (2018). His work has also been exhibited at the Art Institute of Chicago, the V&A, MAK Vienna, the National Museum in Oslo, the Graham Foundation in Chicago and Secession, Vienna, and at Manifesta and the Venice and Chicago architecture biennials.

Curatorial projects include A Clockwork Jerusalem, co-curated with Wouter Vanstiphout for the British Pavilion at the 2014 Venice Architecture Biennale; The Lie of the Land at MK Gallery; and Pattern as Politics, with Priya Khanchandani, at the 2019 Lisbon Architecture Triennale.

Jacob is a columnist for ArtReview, writes Strangeharvest, and is the author of Make It Real: Architecture as Enactment. He is Professor and Dean of the Institute of Architecture at the University of Applied Arts Vienna (Die Angewandte), and directs Sam Jacob Studio, a collaborative architecture and design practice.

For exhibitions, gallery enquiries, acquisitions and commissions, contact [email protected].