Eye To Eye 2007

Medical illustrations on dictionary book covers. 17.5 x 12.5 inches.

(front and back)

Eye To Eye is a bookwork featuring two human profiles with their with brain cases and spinal canals occupied by an image of machinery on the left side and the cosmos on the right. Regarded as separate modes of being, each side symbolizes a distinctly different approach to reality: an analytical or mechanical approach on the one hand, and an intuitive or visionary approach on the other. The facing or eye to eye of the profiles, while suggesting confrontation, also brings to mind the two hemispheres of the brain. In this regard, the dark, x-ray of the bowels holding the cerebral machinery in the left figure and the starry vault contained by the flesh and bone in the right, suggest underlying oppositions in each. When the bookwork is closed, the two sides are conjoined in a hidden synthesis, symbolized by the lamp and book icon on the back covers.