Girl Looking in Mirror 1962

Curator: Elmer Bischoff's "Girl Looking in Mirror," completed in 1962, presents us with a stark scene rendered in ink. Editor: It hits me immediately as vulnerable, yet also withdrawn. There's a real push and pull in the emotions I'm picking up from the subject. Curator: Bischoff, known for his transition from Abstract Expressionism to figuration, uses the nude here to perhaps comment on the performative aspects of femininity and societal expectations during the mid-20th century. Ink as a medium, being relatively inexpensive and immediate, lends itself to studies of form and explorations of the body outside the rigid structures of traditional academic painting. Editor: That rawness translates directly. The line work, it's urgent. Not delicate at all. More like searching... feeling its way around the curves. Do you get the sense that the mirror might not even be there at all, though it's presented to us? That this whole act of looking might just be about feeling seen and understood from the self? Curator: Interesting. We could also read the materiality of the ink itself, its gradations from thick, pooling darkness to almost translucent washes, as symbolizing the very instability of identity. How external perception – in this case, a reflection – is never a fixed point, always shifting in value. The ink application allows for an atmospheric play that speaks to intangible experience, which aligns with ideas Bischoff himself explored in transitioning from Abstract Expressionism. Editor: It’s that pooling you mentioned. The way he uses the ink almost makes it bleed into her contours. Like the identity isn't solid, or separate from the space she's trying to see herself within. I feel an almost uncomfortable intimacy because of that. A confrontation, even. Curator: I agree. I appreciate how this piece brings to the surface conversations on labor within art practice as it balances expressionist concerns and more calculated depictions of the figure through its material rendering. Editor: To sit with it for a moment reveals a complexity in its apparent simplicity... maybe that's its power, huh?