3 Studies for a Mirror represent the research and experimentation that went into the edition of 8 editioned by the Carpenters Workshop Gallery in 2009.
The are a group of immediate and ephemeral contemporary light paintings. The process confounds the notion of traditional portraiture and allows the voyeuristic intentions of the viewer to returned as a narcissistic gaze onto himself. The piece is the disconcerting yet inspiring reflection on the consumption of one’s own image. Where we become Dorian Gray, yearning that it will be the image that grows old and not us. the subject  does not age but vanishes within seconds. It leaves us desiring just one more glance, one more glimpse of something that we inherently recognise.
It is the acknowledgement that we are as temporal as the image. the work encapsulates robert ryman’s minimalist ethos of his monochromatic works  and recalls Francis Bacon’s studies for portraits. thus spanning vastly different aesthetic attitudes. this ‘painting’ details the true likeness of the inner circus of dreams and torments that we are all made up of. A static moment is captured then slowly fades to back to nothingness.
Text by Subhas Kim Kandasamy
