Reflex
Artwork | Optical apparatus
ABS resin, aluminum, glass
220 × 80 × 50 mm
2025
ABS resin, aluminum, glass
220 × 80 × 50 mm
2025
When the self comes too close, it stops feeling like the self.
Reflex turns the gaze away from the outside world and back toward the one who looks. What appears is not a landscape, but the viewer’s own face enlarged at extreme proximity. The self, supposedly the most familiar subject, emerges as something unfamiliar.
The work refuses to treat self-recognition as a smooth act of confirmation. When distance collapses, looking becomes not intimacy, but a physical encounter marked by unease. The apparatus makes the act of seeing oneself unstable, embodied and difficult to resolve.
Reflex turns the gaze away from the outside world and back toward the one who looks. What appears is not a landscape, but the viewer’s own face enlarged at extreme proximity. The self, supposedly the most familiar subject, emerges as something unfamiliar.
The work refuses to treat self-recognition as a smooth act of confirmation. When distance collapses, looking becomes not intimacy, but a physical encounter marked by unease. The apparatus makes the act of seeing oneself unstable, embodied and difficult to resolve.
Shortlisted Artist, Aesthetica Art Prize 2026
York Art Gallery, UK
York Art Gallery, UK