Only In My Mind
Abraham Aronovitch, 2024. Acrylic on canvas, 97 × 130 cm, Behind the Obvious series.
When the mirror ceases to be a site of recognition and becomes a critical threshold: where the image insists, the body withdraws.
Reading note
Only in My Mind belongs to the Behind the Obvious series, in which Abraham Aronovitch interrogates the bathroom mirror as a device of dissociation of the subject. Here, the mirror no longer operates as a surface of recognition, but as an autonomous space that maintains a gap between inner experience and its own image. The face-to-face encounter is avoided, revealing a provisional impossibility of aligning feeling with representation.
The painting suspends the subject in a state of silent tension. As the figure appears to withdraw, its reflection persists and asserts itself, creating a deferred form of consciousness. The work thus explores a moment of lucidity in suspension, where the mirror no longer serves to reveal, but to mark a necessary distance. Through this broken dialogue between the body and its image, Aronovitch stages the complexity of an identity that seeks itself through avoidance rather than direct confrontation.
The whole room: The Threshold
Room 4 · The Threshold, The Tipping Point : 8 paintings, in hanging order.
