Nel Verbeke
The black mirror, 2016
wood, ashed ash wood, wax, copper
183 x 56 x 27 cm
8 + 1 AP + 1 PT
The black mirror seems to absorb rather than to reflect. Only when approached closely, a dark silhouette manifests itself on its surface. This is not the echo of our existence we're used to. Whereas a mirror reflects the things in front of it immediately and directly, the black mirror seems to deliberately delay this directness and to bypass the surficial accuracy.
As the black mirror moves away from the conventional effect of a mirror, it allows us to contemplate on what is often obscured by our image. It replaces the usual shallow reflection by an image of the self that includes the emotions that shaped it.
The act of watching becomes an act of thinking and feeling, intensified and decelerated. The mirror's reflecting ability is achieved by slowly waxing its surface with ashes of the parts that were removed. This strange duality, where remnants enact the vision on what continues to exist, is an abstraction of our own persistence in relation to what we had to leave behind.
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