Saturday, 8:30 pm. Today is the 25th of November, 2006, and as every year, year of the “Lord”. We have finally arrived at the Heimhuder. Christine, as she usually does, was waiting for us with open arms to welcome us and take us flying to the needed rest, but… of course, before that my “Pirin” I have to put the order into order and have everything under control, a time I use to take a look at the page of “Kultur & Medien” of the “Hamburger Abendblatt” newspaper… and I suddenly come across, face to face, with the reproduction of a painting of the great painter of the German Romanticism, Caspar David Friedrich, a work I already knew, titled “Zwei Männer in Betractung des Mondes”, which translates into “Two Men Gazing at the Moon”. This painting by Friedrich had never especially called my attention…, but this time, when seeing it again in the page of a newspaper inviting its art-loving readers to visit the exhibition… and when I faced again the painting, I realized which the reason of that sudden curiosity was.

I rush to visit the “Ausstellung”. What do I see? What does the painting tell me?... it represents two characters looking far away… as far as they are able. There are two of them, one that looks and the other that makes the other one look; they both want to see. There is always one and the other… and others looking, and they look at everything they can and are capable of seeing. You can look at everything but… Can you see the moon? Can you see the light? Can you see creation?

Coming back to my characters (as I have already made them mine), they are two, two that meet, two that love each other, two that hate each other, two that cover the same path; even when one gives, the other one receives, they are two; if one needs to lean on the other… they are also two; they are always two. That is why I want to enter in C.D. Friedrich’s painting and become the third looker; tell what I see after looking with the eyes of both of them and try to see with mine.

I am already in my position!


Jorge Rando, Hamburg, November 2006