Thursday entry: Disposable Reflections

The mimetic qualities of painting and photography create a tangible surface for history and imagination to permeate. If one element should overpower the other, the results would be irrelevant, but the ability to coexist in one space shows magnificent potential for human intellect to sort through it all. As artists and magicians alike, I feel there is a subconscious search to document illusion. In a way, every record of an existing environment can only supply that which it represents, making any attempt almost futile; but in the absence of direction, there lies room for possibility. Gerhard Richter materializes this circumstance by incorporating glass into his work. The panes create a multilayered composite reflection that is not entirely opaque; a translation that is far from being concrete. “Purged of all evidence of the maker's presence, they absorb as their content the ambient world before them in all its transitory serendipity” (1). I find a certain comfort through his acceptance of not having to gain any understanding from a piece of art. With intentions aside, the relationship that is born between viewer and work will forever be separated from the initial experience of its creation.

1. Cooke, Lynne. Gerhard Richter essay.

http://www.diacenter.org/exhibs_b/richter/essay.html

http://www.tate.org.uk/collections/artist-rooms/gerhard-richter.shtm