Symmetry and optics are guiding principles in the shifting, reflective work of Robin Mitchell, but nothing here is exactly as it may seem. “Mirror,” 2018, began as an original gouache painting on paper which was manipulated using Photoshop to mirror the image horizontally and then vertically. The resulting work has a quality of both the organic and the mechanical. She then made another painting based on this composition. The image is not absolutely symmetrical but is open to the quirks and eccentricities that occur by working by hand. Those paintings became the foundation of a body of paintings that she has been exploring for over ten years.

​For The Proxy Gallery she chose to revisit the original digitally derived mirrored image and place it in the rear of the box. The “floor”, “ceiling”, and “walls” of the gallery are lined with a highly reflective foil paper. The original “mirrored” image is now reflected again and again endlessly. However, due to the specific properties of the Proxy Gallery, the optical effect may appear infinite in area, but is enclosed in a finite volume which we cannot enter with our bodies but only our eyes.