Section 4 – Light, Mirror, and Mirage: Capturing Ephemeral Nature
The physical and metaphysical conditions of light have preoccupied imagination throughout time. Light reflected on water may have provided the earliest mirror, followed by polished stone, then silvered glass, and finally synthetic materials like plastic. Bent light, together with atmospheric effects, produces the mirroring phenomenon of mirage, an illusion of the existence of the nonexistent. This paradox is not unlike the variegated ways that the psyche transforms impressions in a mirror.
Capturing the ephemeral properties of nature in representational form has always preoccupied and challenged artists. The works in this section attend to the optical refraction of light through fabric, metal, neon, and photographic exposure.
The function of art is to make you look…into your own life—see the secrets that are in the shadows, or in the way the light falls somewhere. – Robert Rauschenberg
Robert Rauschenberg, Mirage (Jammer), 1975. Sewn fabric, 80 x 69 inches (203.2 x 175.3 cm). Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, New York, New York. © Robert Rauschenberg Foundation / Licensed by VAGA, New York, New York.
Lyle Ashton Harris, Untitled (Oak Bluffs) from the series The Watering Hole, 1996. Duraflex photograph, edition 2/6, 48 x 44 inches (121.9 x 111.8 cm). Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, Durham, North Carolina. Promised gift of Blake Byrne (T’57), L.4.2007.10. © Lyle Ashton Harris. Courtesy of the artist and CRG Gallery, New York, New York.
Arsen Savadov and Georgii Senchenko, Untitled from the series Controlling the Inorganic Control, 1991. Photo emulsion on linen, 48 x 40 inches (121.9 x 101.6 cm). Collection of the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, Durham, North Carolina. Gift of Robert E. Falcone, 1998.21.5. © Savadov & Senchenko. Photo by Peter Paul Geoffrion.