Zoom On The Gaze (High quality Print Version) by Josefina Herz
Explore Mondoir Studio
Medium: Graphite
Dimensions: 40 x 30 cm
Edition production year: 2024
Edition of 50
Price: $250.00 USD
Status: available
“Zoom on 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 tightly cropped whale eye anchors this drawing, turning anatomical proximity into an encounter poised between recognition of an animal and projection onto its gaze.
- Herz identifies animals, magnified detail, and the boundary between realism and abstraction as central to her practice. Here, that concern is concentrated in one watchful eye amid overlapping bodies.
- In the supplied photograph, curved heads and pleated undersides fill nearly the entire sheet. The compressed framing removes a wider marine setting, making species, scale, and bodily separation briefly difficult to parse.
- The documented graphite medium permits fine tonal gradations and sharp highlights. Dense shading models bulk, while repeated lines across the lower body shift observed anatomy toward a rhythmic pattern.
- Herz describes the gaze as a meeting with another consciousness. More cautiously, the work belongs in discussions of how close observation can support empathy while also exposing the human urge to assign meaning to animals.
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...
