The Reach

I framed two figures reaching, each lifting a single finger toward the other, almost meeting in the middle. The pose carries the memory of an old painting where life is passed from one hand to the next. Seen from above, they sit on separate stones with a gap of empty ground between them, straining across it. But each face is a screen, so even the reach is mediated, held just short of arrival. Maurice Merleau-Ponty wrote that to touch is always also to be touched, that real contact is a shared presence between two living bodies. That presence is what the glass quietly steals. We keep the gesture of reaching long after we have lost the thing it was for. I wanted that small gap between the fingers to feel like the distance inside a connected life. Part of the series Do You Remember Yourself? by Mehdi Rooz. Also available as a complete three piece set.