(Uerdingen 1912–1990 Krefeld) Spherical Object, on the reverse signed, dated Luther 1988 and stamped “sehen ist schön” and “energetische Plastik”, 3 x 3 concave mirrors on mirror, laid down on wood,182 x 182 x 10 cm, in original plexiglas box, (PS)

Provenance:
Private Collection, Rhineland - directly from the artist

“The doggedness and insistence in attaining the medium of light in its entire spectrum reaches its unquestioned zenith in the fore–image that the concave mirrors can create”. (Honisch, Dieter Ed.. Adolf Luther, Licht und Materie, Recklinghausen 1978 o. a.) Luther’s works show light to be an immaterial, inexhaustible, complex reality. Light is simultaneously the object and message of the work. The concave mirror objects serve as instruments, their instrumental function to optically multiply the inherent reality with the aid of several identical concave mirrors. The concave mirror is a serial reflection-medium of light, open in only a single direction, which “ejects the reflection of the image from its insides, it’s focal point lying outside itself, in short, throwing back the images from whence they have come: into the three-dimensional spatial reality”. (Merten, Ralph, Adolf Luther - Am Anfang war das Licht, Stuttgart 1987, p. 194) Depending on the observer’s standpoint, the viewer sees the “fore-image” as an inverted image, one both simultaneously irritating and fascinating. The concave mirror instrument reflects and interacts with every external movement it picks up, bundling it together and throwing it back into the space as an inverted image. The object can only perform its function when viewed by the observer. The size and the arrangement of the nine large serial mirrors in Adolf Luther’s spherical object are so designed so that the observer moves, and is intended to move, in front of the object. Only by doing so will the complex experience of perceiving the light and the surrounding space in a new form - the artist’s intention - be conveyed to the observer.