Some of the old masters believed the ear outlived the heart, so they would sit with the dead forty days, giving directions. We didn’t expect that kind of treatment, given the times. We thought we had better get to where we knew the map.
We weren’t sure what to make of the artist’s work, so asked. There is something unknown in you, she said. She wanted us to see it. We asked her if she was sure about that and she laughed, shaking her head. We did not always know how to talk to the artist.
In one series, she created shapes from mathematical theorems, but we took them for angels. The effect was like walking in a cathedral. We wanted to know how she did it. Something happens, she said. But when I work, I do not think of things.
I wish you could see it, and we asked what. How the void is the place where you stand, she said, and left us. We are still here, looking.
***
Inspired by the work of Dorothea Rockburne.
If you have to look for it, you’ve already passed it by.
Looking, you cannot see.