I put a picture on a wall. Then I forget there is a wall. I no longer know what there is behind this wall, I no longer know there is a wall, I no longer know this wall is a wall, I no longer know what a wall is. I no longer know that in my apartment there are walls, and that if there weren’t any walls, there would be no apartment. The wall is no longer what delimits and defines the place where I live, that which separates it from the other places where other people live, it is nothing more than a support for the picture. (Georges Perec, Species of Spaces and Other Pieces, 1974).
Granted there is a picture, what’s going on behind it?

Rey Akdogan examines, reveals, and particularizes exactly those diffident objects that lie hidden in the space between the picture and the wall, the supports that, ‘magical in their strength and simplicity,’ are known as “french cleats”.

The work of art typically overshadows if not completely obliterates its support from sight. “Cleats, often camouflaged by being painted with the exact same paint that is also used on the edges of an artwork, are not made to be an evident part of a visual universe”, notes Akdogan.