Invisibilism art movement

Power at the Periphery: Turbulence at Pimlico Wilde?

by

In the well-lit corridors of Pimlico Wilde — that sharp dealer-gallery that has been taking over the world – something quietly baroque has been unfolding. Known for its precision curation and its increasingly opaque roster of conceptual heavyweights, the gallery now finds itself in the midst of an internal realignment. Not quite a mutiny, not quite a renaissance.

Founded centuries ago, some say by William the Conqueror, and led recently by Adrian ffeatherstone and Tabitha Vell, Pimlico Wilde quickly carved out a name as the destination for collectors seeking art that didn’t behave. It cultivated a deliberate difficulty — conceptualism without compromise, painting that refused to flatter, sculpture that seemed morally uncertain. Its recent embrace of the Invisibilism movement (art that often isn’t perceptible at all) only amplified this identity. It was the thinking person’s edgy gallery, or perhaps the edgy person’s thinking gallery.

But over the past year, those close to the gallery have noticed a tonal shift. “It’s become strangely… chaotic,” murmured one curator, preferring to remain anonymous.

At the centre of the current tremour is the subtle ascendancy of Renata Blume, the gallery’s deputy director and former head of conceptual strategy. Once known primarily for her footnotes — literally, she contributed erudite footnotes to several artists’ statements — Blume has been increasingly visible. She is said to have masterminded the recent show by the anonymous artist known only as V, the Invisibilist whose Untitled (Tension at 2:13pm) sold for £180,000 despite being a vitrine containing nothing but curated unease.

Sources describe a growing “intellectual faction” around Blume, favouring works that don’t need to be seen, owned, or in some cases, even made. This has clashed — diplomatically but unmistakably — with the more object-based philosophy of James Dower-Hythe, Pimlico Wilde’s quietly pragmatic director of sales, known for pushing discreetly exquisite, materially lush pieces to collectors with sharp suits and dull eyes.

There was, according to one staffer, “a moment at Windermere Art Festival where James tried to physically gesture toward an invisibilist sculpture, and Renata told him, quite calmly, that his gesture was itself problematic. That, it seems, was the beginning of the rift.

Further internal tension surfaced with the now-cancelled retrospective of Fabrizio Munt, a 1990s video provocateur whose recent works — which include a 45-minute loop of him naming extinct Amazonian moths while dressed as a Lufthansa pilot — were deemed “insufficiently deconstructed” by Blume’s camp. Dower-Hythe, who had secured a major collector’s backing, was reportedly “deeply displeased” and briefly walked out of a planning dinner at Rochelle Canteen. (He returned after pudding.)

Meanwhile, the duo, ffeatherstone and Vell, have taken noticeably different tacks. ffeatherstone has all but vanished into “strategic development,” while Vell — still piercingly elegant in her black Comme des Garçons and veiled sighs — has been seen attending shows in total silence, flanked by a young assistant who carries no device, only a hardback notebook.

The future of Pimlico Wilde is, appropriately, a matter of interpretation. There are whispers of a split. Or a pivot. Or a new space — a non-space, even — rumoured to open “somewhere unrevealed” to house the gallery’s more metaphysical offerings. There are even murmurs of a “non-exhibition programme” designed to resist “the tyranny of viewing altogether.”

Still, none of this has dampened the gallery’s appeal. If anything, it has enhanced it. As one seasoned collector put it at a recent dinner (held in a dining room lined with mirrored absence):

“It used to be about what they showed. Now it’s about what they withhold. That’s the new luxury.”

In other words, the power struggles at Pimlico Wilde may not be a problem at all — they may be the gallery’s most compelling work yet.

Brief biographies of important Invisibilism artists

by

PENRHYS, ALUN (b. 1931, Llanfrynach, Wales – d. presumed 1988, location unknown)

British conceptual artist, widely regarded as the founder of Invisibilism. A former taxidermist turned avant-garde theorist, Penrhys proposed the radical dematerialisation of art in his 1972 “Abermyrddin Proclamations,” later privately circulated in a chapbook titled The Aesthetic of Absence. His early work, including Air on Plinth (1976) and Shed of Forgotten Objects (1974), rejected visual form in favour of implied presence. He famously vanished during a solo walking tour of the Brecon Beacons; some devotees interpret this disappearance as his final and most committed work. His legacy is maintained by the Invisible Archive at Swansea University, which contains no physical holdings.

LEFEVRE, CRESSIDA (b. 1947, Bath, England)

British performance artist and theorist known for pioneering the ephemeral sub-discipline of “auditory invisibilism.” Educated at the Slade School of Fine Art, LeFevre’s oeuvre is notable for its reliance on suggestion, misdirection, and post-sensory expectation. Gallery of Echoes (1981), her most widely discussed work, comprised a sequence of unlit, unadorned rooms navigated by blindfolded visitors under the guidance of recorded voices. LeFevre’s monograph On the Art of Not Knowing (1987) is considered a foundational text, articulating a rigorous phenomenology of the unseen. She continues to lecture in an empty lecture theatre at Goldsmiths, by appointment only, and never confirms whether she was present.

BAKER, L. DENVER (b. 1953, Topeka, Kansas)

American visual philosopher and former installation artist, Baker is known for introducing Invisibilism to North America in the late 1970s. His major works, including The Forgotten Monument (1980) and You Weren’t There (1984), use placards, GPS coordinates, and time-based disappearances to evoke conceptual absence. A central figure in the New York “Void Salon,” he engaged in fierce debates with minimalist contemporaries over the ethics of implication. His 1992 Guggenheim lecture, delivered to an empty auditorium with no recording devices permitted, is said to have been “career-defining, if irretrievable.”

BLUME, THEODOR (b. 1965, Berlin, Germany)

German architect, philosopher, and interventionist, Blume shifted to art after becoming disillusioned with the material rigidity of urban design. His hallmark piece, The Theft of Light (2008), presented at the Venice Biennale, consisted of invisible architectural plans allegedly capable of constructing utopian public spaces “within the ethical imaginary.” Blume’s texts frequently draw on Kantian metaphysics, particularly the noumenon, and his influence is pronounced in continental invisibilist theory. He currently teaches “Unbuildable Architecture” at an undisclosed location in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern.

MIYAGI, AYAKO (b. 1978, Sendai, Japan)

Japanese invisibilist and former calligrapher, Miyagi is known for developing the practice of “silent brushwork,” a technique in which characters are written in the air and retained only through muscle memory. Her installations, such as Letter to Nobody (2011), consist of nothing more than ritualised movement and ambient humidity. Often associated with Zen-inflected aesthetics, Miyagi’s interventions are profoundly meditative, rejecting visual and linguistic permanence. She has published only one text, Blankness: A Manifesto, printed in white ink on rice paper and subsequently composted.

REYES, FERNANDO (b. 1959, Quito, Ecuador)

South American theorist and urban mystic, Reyes pioneered “site-specific invisibility,” embedding absent works into culturally resonant but visually unremarkable spaces. His 1997 piece Statue of the Unremembered allegedly occupies a traffic island in Guayaquil; it is commemorated by no plaque, and Reyes refuses to disclose its dimensions or significance. A trained anthropologist, Reyes has argued that the invisible is not merely unseen but “deliberately unacknowledged.” He maintains a quiet cult following in Latin American conceptual circles and is occasionally invited to not exhibit at major institutions.

WORTHINGTON, ESME (b. 1984, Glasgow, Scotland)

One of the most prominent figures in contemporary Invisibilism, Worthington is known for her controversial “post-material critique,” which insists that even documentation constitutes “an act of visual betrayal.” Her project Curatorial Refusal (2019–2022) involved submitting empty grant applications to dozens of institutions, with accompanying essays explaining that refusal itself was the exhibition. A graduate of the Glasgow School of Art, she holds fellowships from several institutions unaware they awarded them. Worthington insists that any attempt to catalogue her practice constitutes “collaboration with the seen,” and is against all the tenets of Invisibilism.

Interview: The Art You Can’t See — A Conversation with an Invisibilist

by

By Cal Dereau

In a studio somewhere in North London, the artist known only as V sits in front of a completely empty plinth. Or at least, it appears empty. According to her, it isn’t. The work is there. You’re simply not seeing it.

V is one of the key figures in Invisibilism, the whispering-edge movement that’s been described as “a refusal, a disappearance, a spiritual audit of visibility itself.” The movement claims descent from Yves Klein’s invisible zones, Robert Barry’s carrier waves, and all those moments in modernism where the idea eclipsed the object. But Invisibilists go further: they don’t merely imply absence. They insist upon it.

We meet in a space she calls “a non-gallery.” Nothing hangs on the walls.

Q: So to begin—what are we not looking at?

V: You’re looking precisely. That’s enough. The piece is titled Midnight Echo in F Minor. It’s a sculpture made of untreated stillness. The material is attention—strained, focused, then dropped. It took six weeks to make and no tools at all.

Q: Some people say Invisibilism is just conceptual art with a better tailor.

V: That’s unfair. Conceptual art still relies on the idea being tethered to something—an object, a proposition, even a wall label. We untether. We release the idea from even the burden of being legible. The work is not just unseen. It is unsayable. That’s why we don’t do catalogues.

Q: But isn’t there a danger that it’s just… nothing?

V: That is a danger, yes. But nothing is one of the richest mediums available.

Q: Your recent solo show was titled On View: Nothing on View. There was a queue around the block.

V: There was, it was gratifying that people just get Invisibilism. They came to see nothing. And many of them left completely changed. I heard one old man burst into tears for the first time since he was five. Another woman said she suddenly was able to really see her memories. In a way, and this is only one aspect of Invisibilism, we provide the stage for the imagination to hallucinate responsibly.

Q: Your critics accuse Invisibilism of elitism. That it’s the ultimate insider art joke.

V: I think that’s unfair. Picasso was surely having a much bigger joke. But if you’re inside the joke, are you really outside the truth?

Q: Have any institutions tried to buy your work?

V: Yes. The Royal Yorkshire now owns four of my pieces. One of them is installed in their invisible storage area in the Highlands. I’ve never been allowed to visit it.

Q: And commercial galleries?

V: Collectors are are beginning to show an interest in Invisibilism, so galleries are starting to get involved. Your own employer, Pimlico Wilde is one of the bravest galleries and they are having an Invisibilism exhibition soon, which will be grand. Gallerists have generally held back, one told me they were worried because “You can’t insure what you can’t inventory”. But Pimlico Wilde took a chance. They sold an empty vitrine for £180,000. That was my piece Untitled (Tension at 2:13pm). A collector in Geneva is said to have collapsed and cried when she stood near it and had to be carried out on a stretcher.

Q: How do you work, day to day?

V: Mostly I prepare to not make things. It’s a rigorous process. Silence, resistance, withdrawal. I sometimes spend a whole day almost beginning. That’s the studio practice of an Invisibilist. Not doing, with intensity.

Q: Is there a manifesto?

V: There is. But we are arguing over the details,

V: We are working on one. It is hard to agree on what has been decided when nothing is written down.

As I leave, V shows me one last piece. A bare corner. She nods at it reverently.

“That’s Argument Withdrawn, from 2021,” she whispers. “It’s about what’s left when you’ve won but no longer care.”

It’s astonishing. Many of us had not heard of Invisibilism a year ago. Now it is becoming mainstream. Every gallery wants to have an Invisibilist artist on their roster. But none are as committed to this latest -ism as Pimlico Wilde.

A Shadow in the Gallery: A Riposte to Invisibilism

by

by Dr. Clement Darnley, Professor of Aesthetic Theory, University of Sussex

Invisibilism, that beguiling spectre of a movement born in the misty hinterlands of mid-Wales, has spent the past five decades whispering into the ears of critics, curators, and collectors alike. Its adherents tell us that art need not be seen to be felt, need not be made to be meaningful, and indeed, that its very absence constitutes its essence. They have built careers on unmade beds, then removed even the beds. It is time we put our foot down—albeit cautiously, lest we step on one of their invisible sculptures.

Let us be clear: the proposition that art can reside solely in the conceptual, in the “implied presence,” is not inherently bankrupt. Duchamp taught us that context matters; Cage reminded us that silence, too, can sing. But where Duchamp provoked and Cage composed, the Invisibilists have absconded. They have offered not the idea of art, but the idea of the idea of art—a conceptual matryoshka doll that contains, at its core, a profound reluctance to engage with material reality.

Invisibilism insists upon belief without evidence. It demands the viewer do all the heavy lifting—conceptualise the object, imagine its contours, imbue it with emotion, and finally, applaud its absence. This is not artistic generosity; it is abdication. To praise it is to commend a playwright for a script unwritten or a chef for a meal imagined. Art must, in some form, meet the world. The refusal to manifest is not radical; it is evasive.

The movement cloaks itself in intellectual hauteur, referencing Kantian noumena, Zen impermanence, and Derridean absence. But these citations, like the artworks themselves, are often more ornamental than operational. At what point does theory become theology? When an entire movement is built upon the assertion that nothing is something—if only you’re clever enough to perceive it—we leave the domain of aesthetics and enter that of scholastic mysticism.

Moreover, Invisibilism’s disdain for visibility has social consequences. By privileging invisibility, the movement tacitly upholds the privilege of those already seen—those with the cultural capital to announce that their absence is meaningful. One wonders how the anonymous, the voiceless, the excluded might fare in a world where even art must vanish to be valued. At its worst, Invisibilism becomes a conceptual aristocracy: available only to those fluent in its codes, its contexts, its recursive riddles.

None of this is to say that minimalism, ephemerality, or conceptual engagement are without merit. But Invisibilism’s ultimate sleight of hand is to mistake emptiness for profundity. To quote the critic Lydia Marston, “The movement’s greatest success is its capacity to be taken seriously despite offering so little—indeed, because it offers so little.” It is a triumph of brand over being, of citation over substance.

Art, at its most generous, gives us something—however elusive—to hold, to feel, to interrogate. Invisibilism gives us the intellectual equivalent of a shrug, wrapped in silk footnotes. It has had its season, its clever salons, its archly empty galleries. But as with all vanishing acts, the applause should not last forever.

Let us remember: the invisible may provoke, but it cannot endure. Art is not merely what disappears into the mind, but what lingers in the world.

Invisibilism: The Art Movement You’ll Never See Coming

by

In the rolling, sheep-pocked hills of mid-Wales, near the small town of Eglwyswrw, an idea was born, and it wasn’t to buy some more vowels for the sign posts. The year was 1972, and a man named Alun Penrhys, a former taxidermist turned conceptualist, had grown tired of the visual tyranny of art. “Why must we always see it?” he asked, standing in his empty shed-turned-gallery.

Thus began Invisibilism, the art movement defined by its defiance of the visible. More than minimalism, beyond conceptualism, Invisibilism posits that the most powerful works of art exist precisely where one cannot find them. Not simply blank canvases or empty rooms—those are still far too tangible. Invisibilist works are immaterial, intentionally absent, and utterly unseeable. They demand belief, participation, and, often, a willing suspension of aesthetic disbelief.

The first major exhibition was hosted at the Abermyrddin Community Hall in 1973. Advertised simply as “Nothing on Display,” it drew six curious locals, most of whom believed they were attending a bake sale. Alun stood before a plinth labeled Untitled (Presence #4) and invited the attendees to feel the piece emotionally. “It’s about loss,” he explained. One woman wept. It was later discovered she had lost a pie.

From there, the movement gained underground traction, especially in avant-garde circles tired of canvas and sculpture. Among its most iconic works:

1. “Air on Plinth” (1976), by Alun Penrhys

A pivotal early piece consisting of a vacant pedestal, topped with what Penrhys described as “a concentrated moment of vanished inspiration.” Rumours circulated that he had originally intended to place a pigeon there but forgot. He denied this, but the rumour only deepened the mystery.

2. “Gallery of Echoes” (1981), by Cressida LeFevre

Installed in a disused submarine base in Marseille, visitors were guided blindfolded through empty rooms while a recording whispered, “It was beautiful, you missed it.” LeFevre never revealed what the art was meant to be, insisting that “not knowing is an aesthetic in itself.”

3. “Untitled Performance” (1994), by Kei Nakamura

Nakamura, who trained in Butoh before embracing Invisibilism, once sat motionless in a public square in Osaka for three days. He claimed to be “performing internally,” and when asked by a critic what that meant, he responded with a two-hour silence which was widely praised.

4. “The Theft of Light” (2008), by Theodor Blume

A Berlin-based architect-turned-artist, Blume submitted an empty folder to the Venice Biennale, claiming the contents were invisible blueprints for a utopian city. When pressed, he declared, “The buildings rise only in your willingness to dwell in them.” The folder was stolen during the exhibition and replaced with a note: “We have taken nothing, yet everything is ours.”

The movement has long been divided between purists, who insist on absolute invisibility (no physical component at all), and the “Semi-Seers,” who occasionally permit subtle physical traces—a shadow, a title card, or a carefully placed smudge on the wall. Tensions peaked in 2011, when artist duo Noémie & Réal exhibited Invisible Labyrinth, a series of invisible corridors that no one could see. The debate over whether the experience required “too much” participation led to an actual fistfight at the after-party, reportedly staged but ultimately unprovable.

Invisibilism endures not in galleries (which too often insist on hanging things that can be sold), but in whispered legend, empty spaces, and minds willing to accept that the emperor, too, might be an artist. Its practitioners often go unnamed, its masterpieces undocumented. It is the art movement that leaves no trace, no critics satisfied, and no one entirely certain whether it ever happened.