Mirror.Mirror

2015–2017

Mirror.Mirror is a series of stainless-steel panels marked by gunshot impacts, dents, and traces of exposure to the outdoor environment. Rather than presenting a fixed image, the reflective surfaces continually bring the surrounding world and the viewer into the work.

The marks on the metal suggest violence, rupture, and physical impact, while the polished surfaces continue to reflect trees, buildings, sky, light, and human presence. Beauty and brutality therefore exist simultaneously within the same surface, while their relationship changes with the location, weather, light, and position of the viewer.

The work was presented outdoors in Los Angeles, where the panels were installed as a form of large-scale “dressing mirrors.” Viewers could see the marks and wounds on the metal while also encountering their own reflections within them. The act of looking therefore becomes part of the experience of the work.

As the work remains outdoors, time becomes part of its condition. Weather, light, surrounding vegetation, architecture, and human movement continually alter what is seen. The original marks remain, but their visual and psychological relationship to the environment is never fixed.

Mirror.Mirror is therefore not simply a mirror reflecting the world. It is an ongoing encounter between material, environment, time, and human perception, in which what is reflected and what is marked exist together on the same surface.

The work is part of DKING.W（Wang Dalong）’s continuing artistic exploration of the relationship between physical presence and human experience.

AAF
08.24, 2024

Mirror or Revelation?

— A Critique of the Conceptual Art Work Mirror.Mirror