Rebecca Hackemann’s doubled anamorphic drawings explore cultural and historical ideas surrounding the mirror and it’s reflection. They incorporate the cylindrical mirror as an intrinsic part of their meanings. Using fairy tales, psychoanalytical and historical references such as Alice in Through the Looking Glass (sequel to Alice in Wonderland), Jacques Lacan’s mirror phase and the myths of Narcissus, anamorphic ink drawings are created that have two sides. The viewer walks around the drawing and its cylindrical mirror to see another related drawing opposite on the same piece of paper. One image even features two cylindrical mirrors at it’s center. In the case of Alice in Wonderland, one side shows her going into the mirror, the other side her coming out of it – the mirror then becomes a metaphor for ‘The Looking Glass House’ itself.

Technical:

An anamorphic drawing or painting involves a technique that gives a distorted image of the subject when seen from the usual viewpoint, but when viewed from a particular angle or reflected in a curved mirror shows it in true proportion.

Each drawing comes with its own custom made mirror and handle.

These anamorphic drawings use a cylindrical shaped mirror placed at the center of the drawing, which ‘decodes’ the morphed image on the paper.

Historically it was a curious by-product of the discovery of perspective in the 14th – 15th century and was regarded as a display of technical virtuosity. The first examples appear in Leonardo da Vinci's notebooks.

By the 18th Century it was embraced by many more artists and physicists at the time of The Enlightenment and in the 19th century they were used for amusement, in physics and as optical curiosities. The cylindrical mirrors later led to the development and use of mirrors in telescopes.

rebecca Hackemann bio

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