Reflection 1999

Alexander Bogen made this painting, Reflection, with oil paint, smearing and layering blues and greens. I imagine he was standing at an easel, building up the surface, wiping away, adding more, letting the colours bleed into each other to make this watery scene. There’s a dark horizontal band across the middle – is it land, or just a shadow? Then below, more hazy marks like the first ones, only mirrored. The painting becomes an exercise in doubling – of matching and mismatching. And above all, the colours! The painting feels alive with the tension between dark indigo and pops of bright, almost neon, green. Painting lets you be uncertain, to feel your way through. Bogen is in conversation with all the painters who’ve tried to capture light, depth, and the way things shimmer when you’re not quite sure what you’re looking at. He gives us a world that's not fixed but always in flux, always reflecting.