Images Information
Closed ego, 2015 - Mirrored Gardens, Hualong Agriculture Grand View Garden, Panyu, Guangzhou, China, 2015 - Photo: Luo Xianglin, Chen Shengming
Closed ego, 2015
Mirrored Gardens, Hualong Agriculture Grand View Garden, Panyu, Guangzhou, China, 2015
Photo: Luo Xianglin, Chen Shengming
Closed ego, 2015 - Mirrored Gardens, Hualong Agriculture Grand View Garden, Panyu, Guangzhou, China, 2015 - Photo: Luo Xianglin, Chen Shengming
Closed ego, 2015
Mirrored Gardens, Hualong Agriculture Grand View Garden, Panyu, Guangzhou, China, 2015
Photo: Luo Xianglin, Chen Shengming
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In Closed ego, a large sphere of polished obsidian is displayed on a stand. Despite the material’s opacity, viewers can nevertheless look ‘into’ the sphere, discovering their own reflection and that of their surroundings stretched, distorted, and cast in a deep dark tint. Obsidian calls to mind the Claude glass, or black mirror, a tool used by Romantic landscape painters in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries to compose melancholic and abstract views of their environments.

 

Artwork details

Title

Closed ego

Year

2015

Materials

Obsidian, stainless steel, paint (black), rubber ring