I suggest we approach Ilona Ruegg’s Blanks and Possiblesas a puzzle. It would be rather surprising, after all, if a visitor entering the exhibition were to feel immediately at ease when confronted with, say, an aluminium working plank standing vertically beside its cardboard double, set gemstone nestled in deflated gymnastic balls. I would love for this to be my original idea, but I have to credit Georges Perec who adopted a similar methodology in 1978. The puzzle is, in Perec’s novel Life: A User’s Manual, not a matter of piecing things together to arrive at a final solution, but rather of finding “that miraculous conjunction” which, as soon as it is formed, becomes in turn a source of hesitation, dismay, error and expectation. An enigma, precisely! A representational system (a puzzle is typically an image) of interacting atoms producing endless configurations and a whole before returning to their primordial state, but also an experience of bewilderment. A surprisingly good model for…