A Window to the Inner and Outer
I once heard an analysis of a poem by Rilke comparing the sublime to catching fish by hand in a pond. You grasp it, but it always slips out of your hands. The sublime – something impossible to capture. Or is this just something I’ve dreamt? Memories can be so precise, yet so elusive.
A memory of myself as a teenager taking long walks in the dark night. Peering into the homes through the illuminated windows with the expectation and a vision that someone will look out, gazes will meet, and love ensue. But what I didn’t realize is that those looking out of the windows into the darkness from inside the illuminated homes saw only their own reflection. Just as the teenager himself driven by his own desires, expectations and fantasies. Everything acted as a reflection.
While discussing the exhibition, we tried to formulate meaning. There was this sense of an obligation to explain oneself, as though the art in itself wasn’t enough. Then the term motley came to mind. Different gazes – cluttered with the contradictory. Perhaps as an antithesis of sorts to the orderly, stylistically pure sublime.
When everything is put together, something new arises – there is meaning and a trust in the encounter itself. Look carefully, beyond the reflections, beyond the desires and fantasies, beyond the expectations and ideas. As if through a window to the inner and outer.
Martin Ålund