#0011 (Mirror)

Houses are a favourite theme in Nordic art. They protect and keep us warm; they are essential for life. Besides, architecture and language are something from which Dénes Farkas seeks an organising power throughout his work, because, as Ingrid Ruudi says “architecture and language reflect each other”.

The little plastic houses produced in East Germany, which Farkas photographed and presents at this exhibition were once part of the landscape surrounding a toy railway. The “real” house on the two metre, black-and-white photograph is blurred and dispersed because the camera has turned its selective gaze to the image of the house in the mirror. Cheerfully illuminating the reflected image, the camera acts like an ugly person who has reimagined themselves as beautiful while looking at their reflected image. The result is an excellent photograph, one of Farkas’ best still life images at the exhibition.