On view from March 2021, Leila Heller Gallery is pleased to present “Mirror” by Aref Motazeri. In this collection, titled “Mirror,” the looking glass as an apparatus of representation is revisited to become a represented object itself. The challenge is to give form to this amorphous concept. What is always used as a reflective surface to mediate between the I and the non-I's in a Lacanian sense, becomes an autonomous thing in itself to be reflected upon.

It is only when the mirror is turned inside-out that its autonomy as an object is explicated. As a means of reflecting the realm of real, the mirror has always acquired a symbolic order and in this transition, its physicality is always implicit. From a conventional point of view the subliminal existence of mirror does not go beyond the reflective surface but can be found behind it.

In each and every exercise to look at the mirror from behind, this process of explication of its existence is further enhanced through formal investigation of possibilities. Each piece is endowed with a narrative layer as well, ranging from straightforward deformation of a platonic form, to revisiting the concept of the cage as an archetypal device of controlling bodies and spaces that they inhabit.

The artist’s technique in revisiting the potentials of the reflective surface reminds one of the Situationist International detournement. As a “situationist use of the means," the material condition of the mirror, its artistic heritage as well as its contemporary culture, is integrated “into a superior construction of [a] milieu.”