Summer Day’sDream, At Night

Reading note

Summer Day’s Dream, At Night belongs to the Behind the Obvious series, in which Abraham Aronovitch uses the bathroom mirror as a device of inner projection. The work articulates a gap between the lived body and the imagined body: a female figure, seen from behind, stands at a distance from an idealised summer scene, visible only through the mirror. The painting thus superimposes a desired memory—associated with childhood and motherhood—and a nocturnal consciousness marked by bodily fragility.

In this face-to-face encounter, the mirror does not return a real image, but a mental projection. The fragile body remains anchored in the night, while the reflection opens onto a summer scene populated by blue silhouettes seated in the grass. What appears is neither a precise memory nor a concrete anticipation, but the tension of an intimate gap between desire and presence. The luminous image persists as an oneiric trace, stubbornly inaccessible to the present.