Mirrors / Miroirs is conceived through an indirect dialogue with the exhibition Besides, History: Go Hasegawa, Kersten Geers, David Van Severen, a project rooted in the shared references and resonances between the work of two contemporary practices in the presence of history. If Besides, History is premised on impressions of one office’s work registered through representations by the other, this hall case display directly engages these ideas of reflection, refraction, and false mirrors—as metaphors and as physical architectural tools.

Gathering heterogeneous and non-chronologically ordered sets of projects, books, artworks, images of architecture fragments, and photographs, Mirrors / Miroirs plots a possible journey through the ambiguous panorama of images within the CCA collection that evoke, in different ways, ideas of reflection and mirroring.

Assembled as a series of case studies and brief margin notes, the display uses mirrors to investigate various themes: among others, the specular-ego of artist Giulio Paolini; the thin border between public and private space explored through the research of Dan Graham; the idea of the mirror and reflections as narrative devices in dynamics of power in the work of Taryn Simon and John Gossage; the reflected image as spatial prosthesis and ambiguous threshold in the interiors of Carlo Mollino and the urban views of Clara Gutsche; and the contemporary screen as mirror without reflection—as defined by Roland Barthes—in the photographs of Hiroshi Sugimoto.

This project is the result of a conversation between Francesco Garutti (Curator, Contemporary Architecture) and Irene Chin (Curatorial Coordinator), with ideas contributed by Louise Désy (Curator, Photographs)
Graphic design: Sean Yendrys, New York / Montreal