JOHANNES DE EYCK FUIT HIC

Barren room, boxlike metaphysical space. Hoogstraten or Magritte – I might say. The pattern of the checkerboard floor approaching us aggressively breaks up the plane, and withdrawing from us – now we can see it! – “runs out” of the space through the mirrors.
The space of the present. Mr Giovanni Arnolfini looks back at us from the aperture struck through the dim memory of past eras. The large work is a window to the past, a window open only a slit. The distance is not merely spatial. Looking forward, we glance back. Periscope.
Does the playful-taut geometry of perspectives and reflections refer to space or time?
Following the path of the bouncing ray of light, the reconstructable fantasy places the figure behind the scene of the empty panel of the door, taking its point of departure from the volatile mirror-image – as it should. The riddle is solved.
But the gaze obsessively scanning further cannot release itself from its viewpoint in the labyrinth of the kaleidoscopic mirror-image. Our comprehension and obvious certitude are in vain: the creature of the gentle master of visual illusion is to us only a reflected image, a disembodied phenomenon.

(György Mészáros)