Looking Glass 

Gene Davis, a Washington, D.C. based color field painter, created 'Looking Glass' using acrylic on canvas. Davis came of age during the Cold War era, a time characterized by rigid ideological divides. In 'Looking Glass' we see two dark rectangles, each bordered by a series of vertical lines. At first glance, the painting suggests a binary: dark and light, absence and presence, left and right. Yet, the vibrant stripes introduce complexity. The stripes challenge the starkness of the black voids. This might echo Davis's own negotiation of boundaries, as he worked within the art world while also maintaining a career as a journalist. Davis once noted that his stripes were less about any one thing and more about ‘color-interval’ – the way colors interact. Perhaps here, the ‘color-interval’ invites us to reflect on the spaces between identity, history, and individual experience.