When No One Is Looking

On Visibility and the Gaze of Others

I have an image in front of me, and at some point I realise that I do not want to add anything more, so I put it aside.

Maybe it leans against a wall for a few days. Maybe it disappears among other works.

During that time, hardly anyone knows it exists.

Sometimes no one but me.

Still, it does not feel unfinished to me.

The ink has dried. The decisions have been made.

Something that was previously only a possibility is now actually there.

And yet something changes as soon as another person stands in front of it.

Not on the paper.

But around the image.

Someone stops at a part I barely noticed.

Maybe they ask about the title.

Maybe they say nothing at all.

From that moment on, someone else knows about the work.

That cannot be undone.

I am therefore less interested in whether an image needs a viewer.

The question has become more complicated for me.

What was already there before someone else saw it?

And what only comes with that gaze?

Before Anyone Knows About It

When a work is finished, I know many things that no one else can later see.

I know what the paper looked like before. I remember the first mark and sometimes even the point where I almost stopped.

This knowledge is not hidden in the image.

It simply belongs to how it came into being.

Another person does not know this path.

They encounter only what is now in front of them.

Perhaps this is one of the reasons why showing a work can seem as natural as a next step.

With some images, once they are finished, the question of when I will show them arises almost automatically.

Not necessarily because I need approval.

More as if showing them belonged to the natural continuation of what began in the studio.

Perhaps sometimes it does.

But “afterwards” is not the same as “in order for it to become complete.”

A piece of music makes this difference especially clear to me.

Someone can play alone. The last note ends. No one listened.

The fact that no one was there does not change the fact that it was played.

With an image, it is similar and at the same time more difficult.

Because an image remains.

Someone can still encounter it later.

Another Person’s Gaze

With this encounter, something new actually comes into being.

A work that stands quietly among others in the studio can have a different effect in an exhibition space. Someone sees a connection I did not see, or asks a question that would never have occurred to me.

From then on, there is an encounter that did not exist before.

If no one else has seen the work, these traces of another person’s perception are not there.

Perhaps that is one reason why visibility can so easily be confused with value.

What is seen produces reactions.

What gets no reaction can quickly seem as if there was less there.

But at first, this only says something about who knew about it.

Not about what happened.

I notice this difference too in works that remain in the archive for a long time.

Not every one of them is meant to stay there.

Some I want to show, or see again one day in another context.

But that does not make the time before that empty.

The work is already there.

My Own Gaze

Of course my works have a witness.

Me.

That sounds almost too obvious.

I was there.

I saw the work come into being.

Why does another person’s gaze still feel different?

Perhaps because my own gaze is never entirely separate from the act of making it.

I know the decisions. I know which part could have been different. I see not only the image, but also some of what came before.

Another person is not given this history along with it.

Their gaze begins later.

Perhaps that is precisely why it sometimes feels like confirmation.

Something that until then existed only within my own circle moves beyond it.

But I do not quite like the word “confirmation” either.

It sounds as if the work had been waiting for a judgement.

It does not have to.

Perhaps the difference lies elsewhere.

My own gaze belongs to the making of the work.

Another person’s gaze opens a relationship that was not there before.

When Something Becomes Visible

I want other people to encounter my works.

That is precisely why I am interested in what happens in the moment when they leave their own space.

An image that is exhibited or passed on enters contexts that I cannot fully determine.

In an exhibition, it stands beside other works. Perhaps later someone lives with it and connects something with it that had nothing to do with how it came into being.

This relationship only arises then.

Before that, it was not there.

But that does not mean the image itself was missing before.

This is a small difference, and perhaps that is exactly why it stays with me.

A work can gain something through another person’s gaze that I cannot give it myself.

It can also remain unshown for a while.

Unshown and incomplete are not the same thing.

When No One Is Looking

When I put a finished work aside, I do not always know who will see it later.

That remains open.

What is not open is the moment when I stopped.

At some point, the final mark was made.

After that, many things can happen.

Another person may see something in it that I missed.

The work may be given a new place or become connected with a memory that is not mine.

Perhaps that is why I do not always want to show a finished work immediately.

Not to hide it.

More to avoid forgetting this difference.

Someone else can come later.

That changes something.

But it is not the beginning.