Seeing Oneself in the Other (Verse en el otro), 2003
Oil and acrylic on metal
130 × 100 cm | 51 x 40 in
Created while studying Fine Arts at the National University of Colombia, Seeing Yourself in the Other marks an early moment in Mónica López Pinzón’s investigation into the nature of representation. Produced in 2003, the work formed part of a studio project that explored how an image might function not simply as depiction but as a reflective surface for inner experience, and was recognized within the program for its conceptual and material experimentation.
The investigation began with a simple gesture: tracing the contour of the artist’s own body while lying on craft paper. The act recalls the earliest representational practices described by Ernst Gombrich in Art and Illusion, where shadows cast by sunlight or fire were traced to create some of the first images. For López Pinzón, this contour functioned as a threshold — a line separating the interior and exterior worlds while simultaneously connecting them.
This gesture later evolved into paintings on metal, a material whose reflective qualities reinforced the conceptual framework of the work. The metal surface operates simultaneously as image and mirror, allowing viewers to encounter their own presence within the painting and activating the surrounding space.
Through these early experiments, López Pinzón began to approach representation not as imitation but as a structure capable of holding psychological depth. A decade later, encounters with psychoanalytic theory — particularly concepts such as projective identification and the mirror stage articulated by Jacques Lacan — provided language for intuitions already present in the work: that the interior world can be understood as a landscape.
This early work also introduced questions that would continue throughout López Pinzón’s practice, including the use of reflective surfaces, layered temporalities, and the relationship between image, perception, and the interior landscape.