El ojo no toca lo que ve 1994

Francis Naranjo made this installation, whose title translates as "The Eye Doesn't Touch What It Sees," sometime in the late twentieth or early twenty-first century using mixed media. Looking at the construction, I see a horizontal padded form strapped tightly to the wall; the monochrome palette brings to mind the work of Robert Ryman, in which the process of making is front and center. There is a kind of poignancy in the dark straps holding the form in place. They divide the padded element into three sections, like a triptych. It reminds me of the way Agnes Martin made grids to access a sense of freedom, but there's nothing freeing about these straps. The work suggests a sense of restraint. The title points to the limitations of vision. The eye may be drawn to the straps, but the meaning goes deeper. It's more about what we cannot grasp. Art is like that, it invites us to keep looking beyond what we see.