
Creating a seemingly perfect naturalistic image, the mirror has been considered the paradigm of representation for centuries. As part of Gerhard Richter’s fundamental preoccupation with the pictorial and its conditions and possibilities, it is hardly surprising that he has turned towards mirrors and reflective surfaces repeatedly throughout the course of his artistic career.
Unlike paintings, mirrors offer plural, context-dependent, and ever-changing images, challenging fixed truths. Dietmar Elger notes: With this endlessness of alternative pictorial results, Gerhard Richter pleads for a world view that does not set any truth as absolute and always offers the viewer several equally valid ways of experiencing reality.
In Richter’s perspective, mirrors reject individual creativity linked to authorship, engaging viewers instead in the image-constituting process. The mirror, both image and object, reflects without interpretation. As part of Art Basel | Kabinett, Sies + Höke is proud to present a diverse array of works by Richter where reflectivity challenges notions of representation and the relativity of perception.
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