Isabelle Friedrich McTwigan works through the idea of “units”—of time or of objects, such as a sheet of paper, a strip of tape, or a handprint—as structures that operate as both image and item. Her work focuses on the in-between, examining how pictorial order is unsettled through residue, image, sequence, and object, and how meaning accumulates through these relationships. A strip of painter’s tape on canvas can function as a physical barrier—something that could be peeled away—or be rendered as trompe l’oeil.

Through ink transfer, monotyping, body prints, and painting, McTwigan examines how materials resist or embrace form, as well as the idiosyncrasies of specific kinds of content and the impossibility of fully capturing them. She tests how layers can register different temporalities—slowness, repetition, interruption, mechanical and manual. Gesture and symbol blur, and time becomes less about the clock and more about structure: a frame that holds the work.