ABOVE: Gordon Lebredt, L + R [To RS]. Photo credit: Ernest Mayer. (Note: To navigate please click arrows or image.)
09 L + R [To RS]
1974
sheet-metal frame with double-sided mirror
39.4 x 59.7 x 30.4 cm
Collection of the Artist
Inspired by American artist Robert Smithson's mirrored sculpture Enantiomorphic Chambers (1964), L + R [To RS] was one of Lebredt's first so-called “reflexive machines.” It predates Lebredt's interest in the figure of the mise-en-abyme (the repetition of a scene within a scene). Instead of the viewer's image being reflected in each of the two mirrors, what is seen in each case is an extension of the backing plate, one half being actual and the other virtual (a mirror image). Lebredt suggests: “In effect, the usual position of the viewer (one more or less centered before some delimited surface or aperture) is split so that the (now doubly-divided) picture plane be regarded from two different, but already divided, divided or derived, points of view.”
