Retractus

The artwork titled "Retractus" pushes the boundaries of pictorial representation, realizing a visual gesture that is not based on depiction, but on its denial. A hillside diagonally divides the image field, glowing in golden light, as if it were the last remnant of the visible world. Beneath it, black-and-white shadows accumulate: soil, silence, debris.

At the center stands a dark shadow-figure, as if the viewer’s body had burned into the scene. It is not a figure, not a symbolic entity, but a form of absence—a presence that refuses to become visible. This shadow does not cast, but absorbs. It leads not to conclusion, but interruption.

The spatial composition of the image also embodies this withdrawal. There is no privileged viewpoint, no perspectival layering. Instead, it is formed by interwoven surfaces and unsettlingly translucent remnants of reality. Texture, scratch, reflection, and conjured darkness are not visual effects, but aesthetic forms of denying presence.

"Retractus" is not a style or expressive mode, but an ontological condition: the gesture of withdrawal. Reality does not appear as an object, but as an event—or rather, it does not appear at all. This absence, this non-occurrence, is as weighty as any active presence.

The philosophical critique of the visual here is not conceptual, but experiential: the image "Retractus" does not inform, it retracts. It does not lead in, it excludes. It does not reveal, it conceals. But this concealment is not nothing—it is the “non-touch” as presence. Philosophy here does not interpret the image but submits to it. The failure of sight becomes the precondition of knowledge.

This idea is closely linked to the "philosophy of touch". Tactus is presence; Retractus is withdrawn presence: the moment when we almost touch reality, but the motion recoils. Not from fear, but because reality itself becomes untouchable.

Thus, "Retractus" does not negate, but whispers. It is not silent, but listens. It is not distant, but too close. That is why we must step back. That is why the image must be un-seen. Only then can it touch us—when we no longer wish to touch it.

"Retractus" is not an unprecedented work. The gesture of withdrawal, invisibility, and silence recurs throughout art history. This is not a modern or postmodern eccentricity, but a deep tradition that exposes the crisis of representation, the experiential edge of vision.

In the early 20th century, Kazimir Malevich’s "Black Square" (1915) inaugurated a new era: the visible image was replaced by an absolute form that referred to nothing but itself. It was not nothing, but the silencing of visual language: an icon that rejected iconography.

Ad Reinhardt’s black paintings in the 1960s pushed art to the threshold of vision. At first glance, these paintings seem uniformly black, but on closer inspection, subtle color variations and geometric forms emerge. Reinhardt’s works are revealed only to those who are willing to lose themselves in looking. Similarly, "Retractus" does not offer an image, but demands a presence in vision.

Mark Rothko’s works made light into flesh. His paintings are not compositions but presence-sculptures: blocks of color that have fallen silent, yet evoke spiritual spatiality. Like Rothko, "Retractus" is both sensual and metaphysical—it does not depict, it suggests.

In contemporary art, works by Christian Boltanski (fading photographs, relics, shadow projections) or James Turrell (pure light environments) also deal with the limit-experiences of seeing. "Retractus" aligns with these, but ultimately steps back further: it refuses interaction, seeks no response. It simply exists—or rather, once existed. This fading is the final gesture of invisibility.

Invisibility is not lack, but form. Not emptiness, but another shape of presence. Within this tradition, "Retractus" is not novelty, but radical consistency: it refuses to be seen, because it seeks to free itself from the possessiveness embedded in vision.

"Retractus" does not demand attention. It functions as an image only to those who are no longer looking for anything. In an exhibition space, it cannot be placed at the center. It should appear in the back, in a dim corner, half-obscured, surrounded by reflections and glare. The viewer may pass it by. But if they look back—they are already inside it.

There is no explanatory text on the wall. Only one inscription: Retractus. No time, no place, no artist. Only this gesture—this motion of withdrawing presence—that reveals the silence of existence.

Heidegger argued that Being does not appear, but conceals itself. It cannot be objectified; it is a hidden event, perceptible only through the withdrawal of beings. In this sense, "Retractus" is not a representation of reality, but a trace of its concealment.

Derrida deconstructed the metaphysics of presence, claiming that meaning is always deferred, that every presence is made of difference, and that origin is always the product of repetition. "Retractus" embodies this visually: it does not declare, but slides. It does not give, but takes away. Meaning in the image is always postponed.

Blanchot wrote of the literature of withdrawal: writing, for him, is not the space of communication, but of silence. The sentence that cannot be completed. "Retractus" is such an image: an image that shows no image. A presence that touches through distance.

Through these thinkers, "Retractus" becomes not only an aesthetic statement, but an ontological and epistemological question: What does it mean to perceive something that does not want to be present? What does it mean to touch something that retreats from touch?

Quantum physics holds that reality is not independent of observation. Whether a particle behaves like a wave or a particle depends on whether it is measured. This "collapse of the wave function" means that phenomena only become real through observation. In this context, "Retractus" is the moment before collapse. The image does not become fact. It does not occur. It withdraws from the edge of reality.

In quantum superposition, entities exist in multiple states simultaneously, and only observation collapses them into one. "Retractus" is a superposed image: both visible and not. It exists—but only becomes "real" when you stop looking. It annihilates itself the moment you try to grasp it.

Quantum touch is not physical contact, but influence through presence. From this viewpoint, "Retractus" is a quantum experience: a visual event where touch is not nearness but withdrawal. The empty presence, the absent contact—that is the quantum gesture of the image.