Narcissus

box, mirror, water and electronics

" ...The first personal encounter with “Narcissus” involves looking down at gently distorted visages in a shallow pool where drops of water seem to be falling, making concentric circles on the mirror below. Gazing at our own puzzled faces, we confront the impossibility of what we think we see. It appears that there is no source from which the water falls. Against nature, the drops come from below, reformulating conventions of everyday physics. “Narcissus” lets us look down at ourselves, as prospectors. We mine the image for deeper meaning, and are seduced by it, but we do not face the same tragic consequences as our protagonist in the original Greek myth. We are not permitted to look at an undisturbed image, and are thus not able to authorize our own image and admire it, nor are we authoritatively “looking down” at ourselves critically. The expression, to look down on ourselves, no longer assumes a dangerous or derogatory connotation. Rather, we are given a space to reframe the experience and the relation, and this is at the heart of Mirko Lazović's newest body of work..." - by Marianna La Rosa Maruyama