(Uerdingen 1912–1990 Krefeld)
Spherical concave mirror object (around 1978), five half-transparent round concave mirrors, arranged vertically and angled, on flat mirror, mounted on black wooden board, in Plexiglas box, 223 x 45 x 16 cm, framed, (PS)

Provenance:
Private Collection, Germany

Certificate
Magdalena Broska, Adolf-Luther-Stiftung, Krefeld, 17.2.2014.
The work is registered in the Adolf Luther Foundation archive under the number Hsp 78/001.

The five identical, concave mirrors arranged in convex form reflect the reality, light and the movement taking place in the space in front of them. The mirrors are instruments that prove that light is an intangible, inexhaustible, complex reality. Light is thus simultaneously the subject matter and statement of the works.
The objects serve as instruments, their instrumental function to optically multiply the given reality with the aid of several identical concave mirrors. The concave mirror is a serial means of reflecting light, exposed only in a single direction, and which “reflects the images from its interior, its focus lying outside itself, in short, it throws back the images to their original source: into three-dimensional reality.” (Ralph Merten, Am Anfang war das Licht, Stuttgart 1987, p.194)
According to their standpoint, the viewer sees the “front-image” in reverse, a feature simultaneously irritating and fascinating. The instrument, the concave mirror, reflects and interacts with each moving appearance, taking it up from outside and throwing it back into space as a reverse image. The objects can only function through the agency of the viewer. The spherical object – the stele with its five angled concave mirrors – is so arranged that, by moving in front of the object, the viewer himself undergoes the experience intended by the artist. In doing so, the complex of space, light and movement becomes the pivotal moment.

“This form of light is the fluid, kinetic, transparent and intangible, which perpetuates itself, a spatial image of reality.”
(Gerhard Storck, Die Bilder im Raum, opening speech at the Luther-
retrospective at the Museum Haus Lange, Krefeld, 8 May, 1977)

article kinetic art - more than a movement