Soup presents the gallery’s thirteenth exhibition, Eleni Papazoglou’s solo exhibition ‘Half a second or less’. Papazoglou (b. 1993, Athens) is a Greek artist and educator living and working in London. She received her MA from the Royal College of Art in 2018, having previously completed her undergraduate studies in Graphic Design at Camberwell College of Arts. She lectures on the BA Illustration and Visual Media course at London College of Communication.

With a diverse practice incorporating assemblage, installation, design, performance, writing and pedagogy, Papazoglou observes and celebrates the shared societal systems that we use to relate to one another. In particular, she exposes the often overlooked waste produced by language, labour and commerce; the discarded detritus of subsisting within late-stage capitalism. Examining and employing the aesthetics and vernacular of advertising (product packaging/photography, commercial displays, cataloguing) she questions pre-existing value structures, developing coping mechanisms against consumerist systems that seek to exclude, minoritize or other.

For ‘Half a second or less’, Papazoglou turns her attention to the world of punctuation, paratext and marginalia. Presented here entirely removed from their intended context and isolated from their inherent function, her chosen symbols serve as a subversive reflection on the order and disorder of communication systems, as well as a commemoration of their mundane beauty. Whilst ubiquitous in the written word—a back and forth between reader and writer; controlling, instructional—punctuation is all but entirely invisible when spoken. Instead, its purpose becomes performative, comprising breaths, interruptions, stutters and subtle facial expressions; the speechless movement of a mouth. The exhibition’s title, therefore, references the recommended length of pause required between sentences when speaking, the verbal equivalent of a comma. Papazoglou proves that whilst meaning is defined, it is also adrift and open to individual interpretation.

Wall vinyl interventions set the stage for an exhibition consisting of errors, lapses and stutters. Featuring Papazoglou’s own invented punctuation point—the merging of a bracket and parenthesis, both symbols intended to make space for additional information, explanation or afterthought—it appears to enclose and encase the gallery space itself, holding space for the artworks within. Each fictitious glyph is enlarged onto a life-sized scale, inserting the corporeal into the paratextual while assigning importance and supposed significance to the assembled forms. Papazoglou repeatedly implies meaning, and yet withholds it. Artworks present as if coded ciphers desiring a solution, or keys available if only for correct elucidation.

Throughout the exhibition, Papazoglou highlights the importance and omnipresence of graphic design. The visual language of information exchange, it is integrated into almost every aspect of public life. A constructed call and response between context and the conveyance of meaning, at once relational, institutional and instructional.