Repetition Compulsion extends Amy Potenger’s painting practice into a body of layered paper works that sit between drawing, collage and the residues of administration. Drawing, here, is not only mark-making but cutting, stamping, layering, filing and arranging.

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Built from old envelopes, ring binder dividers, vintage computer paper and collected scraps, the works draw on the muted palette and material logic of office stationery. Browns, blacks, whites, blues and small flashes of colour direct attention towards paper fibres, cut openings, stamped language and shadows between layers. The collages function as desk-based paintings, carrying the bureaucratic materials and administrative labour that often sit at the edges of artistic production.

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Office stamps mark the paper with words such as original, copy, revised, completed and by hand. These terms refer to systems of production, revision and classification, while also describing the slow labour of making.

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Moving between partial legibility and visual noise, the works ask to be read from shifting distances. Larger cut forms register first, while stamped language, paper fibres and iridescent details emerge through closer looking.

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The title points to repetition as both comfort and trap. Shapes, words and actions recur across the works, producing rhythm and familiarity while testing the limits of habit. For Potenger, repetition is not only a motif but a method: a way of finding movement inside a fixed system.

 

See individual works here.