Set-Up No. 4

Agnes Fuchs, Vienna 1995

"The perfect object is completely transparent, penetrated from all sides by an ac-tual infinity of gazes, which intersect at it's innermost part leaving nothing concealed." (Maurice Merleau-Ponty: "Phenomenology of Perception", 1966)

The Artists Eye

"To research into the binocular, that is to say, double-eyed visions and ideas, the differences of the intersecting images are therein accounted for by the schematic drawings are pondered over by the images, and image arrangements (with mirrors) by the artist Agnes Fuchs. By the image arrangement (together with the mirrors) Agnes Fuchs refers to the visual overlap, shows in the (external) experimental set-up, what might happen inside the body. Shown is the 'sight' of the 'seeing'. The nursery rhyme "I see what you can't see - you!", is radically referring to the visual process. - Through the mirror view, I see in the mirror what I have seen, my seeing, and at the same time the overlapping images (left and right eye), therefore the process of two-eyed vision, a virtual image appears outside.

Ernst Mach shows with his drawings the process of seeing, the world is constituted by seeing, and finds, surprisingly, in his monocular studies that he has reached 'from the realm of physics into that of physiology or psychology' - therefore to conditions of vision beyond natural science, other than the exactly measurable opinions and neutrally descriptive points of view.

Seeing the difference opens a third posi-tion. The usual image in the head is the sum of two images of the eyes, is the levelling average of images of the left and right eye. With Agnes Fuchs, a third position of a different kind is of interest, which isn't just an added-up sum, but displays a variety far from reproducing exactness, deeper unfathomable rules are sought, once found in the realms of the occult, of alchemy and mysticism. Nowadays the visions don't appear in books or panels, but in the ...

... are virtual solutions.

The experimental set-up of Agnes Fuchs concentrates on the visual sense and on the stereoscopic question, extends into the painterly and diversifies - Our senses are intertwined, apart from our five senses we are aware of a sixth, our sense of balance in the vestibule. And all senses are polymorphous, impure, and interlink with one another." (Jeannot Simmen: "Das Loch der Bilder" in "Die Distanz der Zweiäugig-keit", Edition Kunstwerke, Berlin)

Set-Up

Taking into account the architecture characteristics of the room, tripod-mirror devices are installed at certain positions in the space.

The, (in relation to any interior space), rather small mirror plane which is fixed in size and location, defines - seen from afar - an unsignificant small part of the stereoscopic image perceived by the observer:

a pixel, a flawed or affected area.

a defined, defining section in which part of another spatial view is inserted.

Through the movement of the viewer in the room, the circumspection, the turn of the head, the inserted section gains relative significance. The closer the observer approaches the "pixel" the irritation the larger and more important the section becomes, and the more crucial each movement north, south, east, and west. The missing part of the image gains in size, the covered area is more revealing, the perception in the other direction is broadened.

- Once the observer stands directly in front of the mirror he becomes visible as part of the event.- The usual function: the nose, the eye, the hair style, their arrangement, - the spatial view is concealed by this.

- When the observer stands before the lateral edge of the mirror, so that his forehead touches the edge, he becomes conscious of his human stereoscopic (double-eyed) vision - the conditions of spatial vision which is based on the combination of two slightly shifted retinal images within the observer's head.

Now, standing at the edge of the mirror-tripod, the retinal image of the one directly seeing eye, is mixed within the observer's head, with the retinal image of the other eye diverted by the mirror to another line of vision. an internal blend takes place to show a third new virtual image combining and supplementing the various aspects.