The Gaze (High quality Print Version) by Josefina Herz
Explore Mondoir Studio
Medium: Graphite Pencil on High Quality Paper
Dimensions: 40 x 50 cm
Edition production year: 2024
Edition of 50
Price: $300.00 USD
Status: available
“The Gaze” began with a feeling I could not translate into language. There are moments of recognition that happen before thought, when one living being meets another through the eyes and something silent becomes unmistakably clear. I wanted to hold that fragile instant, allowing the whale’s gaze to carry what words could not. For me, this work is not simply a portrait of a whale. It is an invitation to meet another consciousness without explanation or demand. I hope viewers spend a moment with its eye and discover their own meaning there: wonder, kinship, humility, or perhaps the recognition that silence can sometimes reveal more than words.
Why collect this work?
A tight lateral crop turns the whale’s head into a field of ridges, folds and tonal shifts, while the small, sharply placed eye interrupts this material abundance with a concentrated point of attention.
- Herz identifies animals as central to her practice and describes hyperrealism as a starting point. Here, recognisable anatomy remains legible even as magnified skin patterns approach abstraction.
- The whale extends into the composition from the right and faces a largely empty field. This imbalance gives the eye unusual weight, supporting the artist’s stated interest in silent recognition without fixing its meaning.
- The catalogue records graphite pencil on paper, 40 by 50 cm, from 2024. Graphite permits close tonal gradation here, distinguishing the pale underside, dark grooves and mottled upper surface without colour.
- Placed among animal portraiture or natural-history imagery, this work could focus attention on how cropping changes an animal from a classified specimen into a partial, unresolved presence.
About the Artist
Josefina Herz
Josefina Herz is an artist on Mondoir Studio. Artistic discipline: painting. Based in Navidad, CL.
Nationality: Argentine
Animals are at the center of my practice, not only because of the emotions they evoke in me, but because they offer a powerful way to explore...
