Diego Brambilla — Playful Unease

Five bodies of work by Zurich-based artist Diego Brambilla, each built on a defined protocol — and each producing the image of something that lasted a fraction of a second, was destroyed after the exposure, never existed at all, or turned strange through repeated observation.

Brambilla’s processes are exact: sculptures assembled and then dismantled, reflections captured in total darkness, NASA archive imagery recombined into invented planets, plant-based developers replacing standard chemistry, four years of return to the same natural sites. The method is rigorous. What it delivers is consistently unstable — silhouettes that read as both accidental and deliberate, surfaces that signal their own making, landscapes in which the ordinary will not hold. Playful Unease is how the five series read together.

Now on view at blackprint gallery in Zurich through 13 June 2026.

Structural Accidents

Hung at scale on the gallery wall, the prints stand in for objects that no longer exist. The matt baryta surface holds the residue of the full analog chain — push-processed negative, scan, inter-negative, contact — at a density the original assemblages, made of polystyrene and debris, were never built to carry.

→ Structural Accidents

Mingled with Voids

On the wall, the variants are read in sequence — each photograph one resolution of the same brief act of light, none definitive. The Caffenol surface adds its own grain to the motion blur: two unrelated kinds of unpredictability registering on the same print.

→ Mingled with Voids

Ultraplanets

At 24 × 24 cm, mounted on aluminium and held in natural oak, each Ultraplanet is closer in scale to a window than to a map. The plant-based developer used for each work — Caffenol, Rooibos, or Wineol — is named on the print: a chemistry chosen image by image, declared as part of the work.

→ Ultraplanets

Arbitrary interventions on abandoned rocks

The two presentation modes — paper laminated between extra-clear glass as a sculptural object, or held in tension within an open magnetic frame — are both on view, and the choice between them is itself part of the work. At 20 gsm, the Bhutanese paper reads as a presence in the room, not a substrate.

→ Arbitrary Interventions

Off the Mark

Presented as a Karo Artist edition in the square sleeve format borrowed from blackprint’s historical Karo collection. The accompanying self-published book of the same title, printed by Mikhail Bushkov, makes the four years of return readable as a sequence — what the wall can only show as fragments.

→ Off the Mark

Full series histories and process descriptions were set out in the invitation post of 2 April 2026.

Visit — Tuesday, Thursday, Friday: 12h – 18h. Saturday: 12h – 16h. Closed 22–25 May. Outside opening hours, book an appointment.

Online Viewing Room — The full body of work on view — including the new pieces shown for the first time — is accessible online only through the OVR for the duration of the exhibition. Collectors are welcome to request access.

Online catalogue — Diego Brambilla’s available works to date are listed on the artist page. New works from Playful Unease will be added after the exhibition closes on 13 June 2026.

Diego Brambilla – Playful Unease Solo exhibition through 13 June 2026 blackprint gallery, Zypressenstrasse 57, 8004 Zürich

Works © Diego Brambilla / blackprint editions © Diego Brambilla & blackprint / Photography of works © blackprint, 2025–2026