Beyond Reflection: The 2017 Turning Point of Mirror.Mirror
The Dressing Mirror, the Body, and the Transformation of Spectatorship
AAF
In 2017, DKING.W’s Mirror.Mirror series underwent a significant development. Through the transformation of gunshot-marked mirror-polished stainless steel panels into large-scale, double-sided outdoor full-length mirror installations, the work moved beyond the conventional relationship between an artwork and its viewer. The opposing reflective surfaces established a spatial condition in which viewers approaching from different directions, their reflected images, and the surrounding environment entered into a shared visual experience.
From Reflective Surface to Spatial Encounter
Initiated in 2014, DKING.W’s Mirror.Mirror series brings together two seemingly incompatible material conditions: the irreversible physical marks produced by actual gunfire and the reflective capacity of mirror-polished stainless steel. From its inception, the work has held damage and reflection within the same material surface. The bullet marks do not eliminate the mirror’s capacity to reflect; nor does reflection conceal the physical violence embedded in the metal. Both remain present, simultaneously.
When the series was presented at the European Parliament in Brussels in 2015, this relationship was already visible. The reflective surfaces incorporated images of viewers and their surroundings, placing the act of looking in direct relation to the marks of gunfire. The viewer was therefore not entirely external to the work. Yet the presentation largely retained the format of wall-mounted panels within an institutional exhibition environment.
The 2017 presentation in Los Angeles introduced a consequential change.
In the public area surrounding Los Angeles City Hall, the artist developed the mirror panels into large-scale outdoor installations adopting the format of full-length dressing mirrors. Significantly, these installations featured reflective surfaces on two opposing sides. This was not simply a change in scale or display arrangement. It altered the spatial conditions under which the work could be approached and encountered.
A full-length dressing mirror belongs to an ordinary and familiar field of human experience. It is not primarily an object contemplated from a distance; it is something approached and faced in relation to one's own body. By introducing this recognizable form into the context of contemporary sculpture and public art, DKING.W brought the work into closer contact with the viewer’s everyday physical existence.
The double-sided configuration extended this encounter in two opposing directions. Viewers could approach the installation from either side, encountering the gunshot-marked reflective surface and seeing their own images within it. The work was no longer organized around a single frontal position.
The mirror was no longer only a surface upon which the world appeared. It became a spatial condition through which viewers encountered their own presence and the presence of others.
The Viewer Enters the Work
The significance of this development lies in the change from visual spectatorship to embodied encounter.
In a conventional exhibition, the viewer generally occupies a position outside the artwork. Even when a reflective object incorporates the viewer’s image, that participation may remain primarily optical. The viewer sees themselves within the work, but the relationship can still be understood as one of observation.
The full-length mirror format introduces another dimension. The viewer approaches the reflective surface as a body in space. Their height, posture, movement, distance, and position become inseparable from what appears on the metal. The reflected image is produced through the viewer’s physical presence and changes with every adjustment of position.
The double-sided structure further expands this relationship. Rather than directing all viewers toward one principal viewing surface, the installation establishes two opposing reflective sides. People approaching from different directions encounter the work from different positions, while each side maintains its own relationship with the viewer and the surrounding environment.
The photographic documentation of the 2017 presentation records visitors approaching and gathering around the installations, as well as figures appearing in relation to the reflective panels. These images reveal an important shift: the work was no longer experienced exclusively as an arrangement of sculptural objects in a public setting. It established a situation in which people, opposing reflective surfaces, architecture, and open space became visually interdependent.
This does not mean that the work simply invites participation in the manner of an interactive entertainment environment. Its significance is more fundamental. The viewer’s involvement arises from the actual properties and familiar function of the mirror itself. The artist does not need to prescribe a sequence of actions or provide an artificial interactive mechanism. The act of approaching and facing either reflective side is already sufficient to bring the viewer into the work’s perceptual structure.
In this sense, Mirror.Mirror does not merely represent an interaction between art and audience. It creates the conditions for an encounter in which the viewer becomes physically implicated in the work.
The Tension Between the Body and the Gunshot
The 2017 development also intensified the conceptual relationship between the mirror’s reflective function and its physical damage.
A conventional full-length dressing mirror is associated with self-recognition, appearance, and the everyday act of looking at oneself. In Mirror.Mirror, however, the reflective surface is marked by actual gunfire. The image of the viewer appears alongside the irreversible traces of impact.
This coexistence produces a distinctive tension.
The viewer approaches a familiar object, expecting the ordinary experience of seeing their own reflection. Yet the surface through which that reflection appears carries visible evidence of violence. The viewer's image and the marks of gunfire occupy the same visual field. Neither can be separated from the other.
The double-sided arrangement does not remove this tension. Instead, it allows the same fundamental relationship to be encountered from opposing directions. The reflective experience changes with the viewer’s position, but the physical traces of gunfire remain part of the material surface.
The work therefore places two different forms of human experience into direct proximity: the intimate act of looking at oneself and the material evidence of destructive force.
The mirror does not offer an undisturbed image of the self. Nor does the damage render the mirror entirely incapable of fulfilling its reflective function. Instead, the work maintains both conditions at once. Reflection continues through damage; the viewer encounters their own image through a surface that bears the traces of violence.
This relationship is not dependent on a predetermined narrative. It emerges directly from the material and the viewer’s encounter with it.
The work's force lies partly in this refusal to resolve the contradiction. It does not replace destruction with beauty, or beauty with destruction. It allows both to remain visible.
Public Space as Part of the Work
The move outdoors in 2017 further expanded the series beyond the conventional exhibition setting.
The installations were placed in the civic environment surrounding Los Angeles City Hall. The surrounding architecture, open sky, natural light, and movement of people became active components of the reflected image.
Unlike a controlled interior exhibition, an outdoor public environment cannot be visually fixed. Light changes, people pass through, buildings appear and disappear across the reflective surfaces, and the viewer's relationship to the work is continually altered by the surrounding conditions.
The double-sided configuration made this relationship spatially more complex. The installation could be approached from opposing directions, and each side reflected the environment from its own position. The work therefore did not present a single, fixed view of the public space. It incorporated changing perspectives into its visual structure.
The mirror consequently reflects more than the person standing before it. It brings the individual into a changing relationship with the larger public environment and with other people occupying that environment.
This is particularly important in the context of the full-length mirror format. The viewer sees themselves, but never in isolation. Their reflected body appears within a field that also contains architecture, sky, other people, and the physical traces of gunfire.
The work thus connects individual self-perception with collective and environmental experience. The mirror becomes a meeting point between the personal body and the public world.
The public setting is not simply a backdrop chosen to display the sculpture. It contributes directly to the changing visual condition of the work.
A Turning Point Within the Series
The development of Mirror.Mirror can be understood through three principal stages.
In 2015, the presentation in Brussels established an early institutional context in which the gunshot-marked reflective panels brought viewers and their surroundings into the work's visual field.
In 2017, the Los Angeles presentation extended this relationship through the large-scale, double-sided outdoor full-length mirror format. The viewer's presence was no longer limited to appearing as a reflected image on a single viewing surface. The familiar bodily act of facing a full-length mirror became a central condition of the encounter, while the opposing reflective sides expanded the spatial relationship between the work and its viewers.
In 2023–2024, the series entered a natural environment in Upstate New York, where the reflected image became increasingly subject to landscape, weather, changing light, and the passage of time.
These developments should not be understood merely as successive changes of exhibition location. Each presentation expanded the conditions through which the work could be experienced.
Within this trajectory, 2017 occupies a particularly important position. It marks the point at which the relationship between reflection and spectatorship became explicitly spatial and embodied. The mirror moved from being an object that incorporates the viewer's image to becoming a site through which viewers physically encounter the work and its surrounding world from opposing directions.
This distinction is essential to understanding the series' development.
The significance of 2017 does not rest on a claim that the artist invented audience participation or the use of mirrors in public space. Such practices have broader histories in modern and contemporary art. Rather, its importance lies in the particular way DKING.W developed the existing material language of Mirror.Mirror: actual gunshot marks on mirror-polished stainless steel, combined with the familiar form of a full-length dressing mirror, a double-sided reflective structure, and the conditions of an open public environment.
The resulting relationship is specific to the internal development of the series.
Beyond the Image
A mirror ordinarily returns an image. Mirror.Mirror, however, makes the act of receiving that image inseparable from the material conditions through which it appears.
In 2017, this relationship acquired a new physical and spatial dimension. Viewers did not simply look at a damaged reflective object. They approached a large-scale mirror installation that continued to perform its familiar function despite the visible traces of violence upon its surface. Their own bodies entered the reflection, while the surrounding public environment became part of the same visual field. The two opposing reflective sides allowed this encounter to take place from different directions.
The work therefore brought together conditions that are often considered separately: the physical presence of the object, the reflected image of the viewer, the positions of viewers in relation to one another, and the changing reality of the surrounding space.
What emerged was not merely a larger mirror or a more accessible sculptural format. It was a transformation in the relationship between artwork and spectator.
The 2017 Los Angeles presentation should consequently be understood as a pivotal development in the history of Mirror.Mirror: the moment when reflection became an embodied spatial encounter, and when the viewer's presence became an active condition of the work rather than simply an image appearing upon its surface.
Related Research and Archival References
This critical essay examines the 2017 development of Mirror.Mirror within the broader chronology of the series, initiated in 2014.
For the documented chronology, material characteristics, and exhibition history of the series, see:
DKING.W Studio — Official Archival Statement
For a broader art historical study of material, spectatorship, site, time, and archival history, see:
The Fractured Reflection and the Measure of Time
Document Category: Critical Essay
Published by: Ark Art Foundation
Version: Revised Edition, 2026
© 2026 Ark Art Foundation. All rights reserved.