Art Guide: PLAYFORM curated by Resonant Ground (Rowan Jones and Zhiying Chen)

In this edition of the CFC Art Guide, we spotlight PLAYFORM, a group exhibition curated by Resonant Ground exploring postmodern architecture as theatrical and performative space.

PLAYFORM. Curated by Resonant Ground (Rowan Jones and Zhiying Chen)

Featured artists: snake_case, Anais Öst, Kanzer Xu, Teng Wang, Harry Smithson, Patricia Petersen, Samantha Jackson
Dates: 24 April – 30 May 2026
Opening times: Thursday – Sunday, 12 pm – 6 pm
Location: Hypha Gallery 2, 1 Poultry, London, EC2R 8EJ
Presented by Hypha Studios x recessed.space, kindly supported by Cheapside Business Alliance

Can a building perform meaning? Can a façade lie, exaggerate or play?

PLAYFORM reimagines postmodern architecture as performance, taking No.1 Poultry as both inspiration and stage. When it first opened, this building was hailed as rigorous, flamboyant and controversial. In this exhibition, its bold geometry and layered references serve as a starting point to explore how architecture can speak, deceive and provoke in unexpected ways. 

Bringing together emerging artists working across sculpture, photography, drawing and audiovisual media, the exhibition responds to the theatrical qualities of architectural design.

These works examine how identity and self-expression shift in relation to the spaces we inhabit, how we may mask or ‘perform’ aspects of ourselves depending on our architectural context. Engaging with key postmodern themes: pastiche, irony, impermanence and the instability of meaning, the artists explore experience as relative, uncertain and continuously constructed rather than universal or fixed.

The exhibition seeks to inhabit these postmodern sensibilities while also questioning the assumed rigidity of buildings and spaces. Here, architecture is considered not only as a physical structure but also as a psychological terrain, shaped by memory, perception and social performance. Through varied medium, the artworks remain in dialogue, reflecting each artists’ insight into the intersections of structure, performance and identity. Visitors are invited to co-perform within the exhibition, challenging our notion of static architecture, and instead encountering it as dynamic, participatory and expressive.

PLAYFORM encourages audiences to reconsider not only what buildings are, but what they can do.

Installation views of PLAYFORM at Hypha Gallery 2, London. Photography by Studio Adamson.

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