(Uerdingen 1912–1990 Krefeld)
Concave mirror object, signed, dated Luther 1972 on the reverse and dedicated “für Wolleh”, here stamped in red “Luther Licht & Materie”, 4 x 12 rectangular concave mirrors on mirror, mounted on wooden board, 102 x 203 x 12.8 cm, in original Plexiglas box, (PS)

Provenance:
Lothar Wolleh Collection, the artist’s photographer
Wolleh Estate
Private Collection, Switzerland

The work is registed by the Adolf Luther Archive, Krefeld under the number HSP/72/006. We are grateful to Dr. Magdalena Broska for her assistance in cataloguing this work.

“The distinguishing mark of a serial sequence of identical parts is simplicity: Luther’s strives for simplicity, to expel any intrinsic aesthetic value arising from individual compositions. For the concave mirror objects primarily serve as instruments. They are open to the space in front of them, for – in contrast to all hermetically formed structures – they both reflect and lend an optical dynamism. The instrumental function of a concave mirror is, on the one hand, to multiply a pre-given reality into a multiplicity of unreal, often inverted, and, to the observer, irritating objects, and on the other, to create a form of pure phenomenality in space, transforming the space itself into an otherwise invisible, light-filled energetic space. The concave mirror objects have created their phenomenality from the material nature of the objects. And the concave mirrors throw the objects they reflect back into the real space at the level of their focus. By virtue of the immaterial concreteness of the optical “front-images” (Luther) which the concave mirror objects themselves create, their dignity as formal, serial entities is further reduced. Luther’s artistic ambition is to prove that light is energy in space, which he does by means of instruments he himself must first invent. Seen in these terms, Luther’s ambition is natural, not in the sense of mimesis, but in the intention to make visible that which is a part of nature itself.” (Max Imdahl, observations on Luther’s mirror objects, in exhibition catalogue Luther Städtische Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, 1974, p. 5)

“The desire for truth, one no longer found in illusionary perceptions of existence, leads to achieving a real, a true image space, in which the eye is no longer led into the depths of a perspectivist or illusory space, but rather into a concrete space, one which begins in front of the surface.”
(Adolf Luther, January 1962)