Press release of Roberto Chabet's solo exhibition 'Untitled 2005 (Notes on Johannes Vermeer)' at Magnet Gallery, Paseo from 5 - 26 July 2005.

The exhibition features three works: an installation composed of GI sheets, an open leather trunk filled with mirrors laid on a carpet, facing a neon sign that spells 'Vermeer'; four other neon signs - 'The room, The window, The letter, The map' - taken from recurring details in Vermeer's paintings, beside a large painting onto which several small paintings, each with an embedded harmonica, are attached. The large painting is based on a photograph of the basement of Pupin Hall at Columbia University, where the first experiment on nuclear fission in the US was held in 1939, which Chabet also used as the image for the invitation to the exhibition. The photograph and a text on the experiment conducted by scientist Enrico Fermi, are also included in the installation, attached on two separate clipboards. Another work is a pale blue painting accompanied by a conch shell, which is painted with the same color.

Prior to this work, Chabet also completed a trilogy of works which pay homage to Dutch artists. In this work, Chabet deconstructs and reconfigures Vermeer’s world into a tableau that meditates on 'the act of looking and the complex and overlapping processes of interpretation and perception.'

The press release of the exhibition states, 'the act of looking never fails to posit dilemmas in art such that instead of searching for solutions; it gives birth to whole new movements. The reconfigured objects is a reenactment of their own history with its own perceived space congealing into a tableau of painting. The installation is an emblem of a world transformed into an image beholden to its maker.'