(Uerdingen 1912–1990 Krefeld)
Concave mirror object, signed, dated Luther 68 on the reverse, 4 x 4 square concave silver mirrors (each 22.5 x 22.5 cm) with rounded corners on black wooden panel, with the stamp “Luther - Licht und Materie”, 153 x 153 x 11.5 cm, aluminium frame with plexiglass

The work has been registered in the Adolf Luther Foundation, Krefeld under the archive no. HSP 68 005 and will be included in the digital catalogue raisonné.

Provenance:
Private Collection, Berlin - acquired directly from the artist in 1970.

The sixteen identically shaped, concave square mirrors reflect reality, light and the movement that takes place in the space in front of them differently, each of them in its own specific way. The mirrors are tools that render light as an immaterial, complex reality that does not exhaust itself. The light is therefore object and predicate of the work; without light, the work would fail to achieve its intended effect. The concave mirror-objects serve as instruments, whereby their instrumental function consists in their optically multiplying the existing reality with the help of many identical concave mirrors. The concave mirror is a serial reflection medium of the light, only open in one direction, which “centrifuges the flection of the images from its interior, whose focal point lies outside itself, briefly stated, which projects the pictures back where they come from: into the three-dimensional real space.” (1)
According to one’s position, the viewer sees the ‘fore image’ as a reverse appearance, both irritating and fascinating at the same time. The different concave mirrors reflect and interact with every moving appearance that they take up from the exterior, and which they project back as a bundled reverse image into the room. The space itself is transformed into an otherwise invisible, light-flooded realm of energy. The object can only perform its function when viewed by the observer. The square concave mirrors, with their 4 x 4 arrangement, make it possible for the viewer to experience in person, and each time differently, through his movements and the movement of the surrounding space, the complex effect pursued by the artist. The synergistic interaction of space, light and movement constitutes the key moment.
(1) Ralph Merten / Am Anfang war das Licht,
Stuttgart 1987, p. 194

“This form of light is the fluid and hence kinetic, transparent and hence intangible, self-perpetuating and hence spatial image of reality.”
Gerhard Storck, Die Bilder im Raum, opening speech on the occasion of the Adolf Luther retrospective exhibition, Museum Haus Lange, Krefeld, 8 May 1977