The leaf at the heart of Fig is, in fact, a negative space: a bare canvas, demarcated by painted leaves. From a distance, the work appears like a lush painting, rife with green vitality, but drawing nearer one learns it is rather a photograph of a painting, and that the bare canvas has digitally been filled with sampled leather. 

Fatal creates a reversal between exposure and concealment, so that the fig leaf, which in the biblical story stands for covering one’s private parts, becomes the very one exposing them. The featured photograph is not a reproduction tracing the boundaries of the painting, but rather a documentation of a painting hung on the wall in the studio, with paint drips and makeshift repairs on the floor below. The leather filling introduced into the work was sampled from a sofa that stood in Fatal’s studio—a specific, iconic sofa that has repeatedly featured in his works over the years. Fig seems to expose the studio in its nakedness as well as the nudity of the creative process—a recurring motif throughout the exhibition. 

The work leans against an orderly pile of construction debris: the plasterboard walls disassembled from the museum’s display level, which has accumulated various partitions, constructions, and obstructions over the years. In their absence, the original nature of the space is gradually revealed. Fatal does not “renovate” the museum; he peels the various layers off, revealing a history of neglect behind them. Clearly visible through the featured works, the museum space itself is now seen in its nakedness.