September 24, 2026
The wall text is a system too
Artnet asks why museum wall texts are so bad. At ASAA the text does not explain the work from the outside: it is one more layer of the piece.
Artnet News — Why Are Museum Wall Texts So Bad? · View source ↗
Artnet published a piece this week by Sonia Manalili asking a direct question: why are museum wall texts so bad? It is an old question that keeps coming back because it still has no answer: the label next to the work usually arrives late, written by another hand and following a different logic from the piece.
Our reading starts from how we work. At ASAA every work begins as a system: an open structure of lines and vectors that is then broken with hand-applied oil impasto. Instruction and execution are separated on purpose. The text follows the same logic: it is not added at the end to explain, it is written as part of the system.
That is why each work in the catalogue carries a signal (the event in the world that triggers it), a concept and a lore. They are not a label: they are layers, just like the vector mesh and the paint. If the wall text fails, it is because it is treated as an explanation stuck onto something already finished. We prefer to write it before the paint breaks it.
