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zach teplin
mirrors
across the series, stark brushstrokes and restrained fields of pale blues, grays, creams, and whites create a monochromatic visual language that gives an unexpected physicality.
neither overt windows into reality or objects of self-investigation, these works swell and compress—creating subtle distortions that mimic perception itself. the paintings become less concerned with what mirrors show than with how mirrors persuade us to trust what they represent.
zach teplin, mirror 06, 2025
zach teplin, mirror study 27, 2025
zach teplin, Magritte Study 1, 2026
zach teplin, triptych, 2025
the mirror functions as both subject and metaphor: a device of truth ultimately incapable of accessing it. the works ask what it means to trust information increasingly structured around production; what does seeing actually reveal? what does it conceal?
the questions and obstacles of perception are numerous. they speak of fear, ignorance, emotion, misunderstanding, and power. consciousness does not merely influence what we think; it increasingly influences what we are capable of perceiving.
MIRRORS suggests a troubling possibility: that many of the identities and images we engage in and with are not chosen freely. they arrive already structured, already coded, and integrated into systems that precede us. a staged autonomy, authorship, freedom. still, these paintings do not offer cynicism—they are careful to commit to the opposite.
if perception can be conditioned, can it also be sharpened and contained? if representation can obscure reality, can it also reveal the processes through which reality becomes visible?
zach teplin’s ultimately refusal to reflect redirects his viewers’ attention toward the act of looking itself. in doing so, the artist proposes something simple: that truth may not reside in the physical realm, but rather, in the difficulty of learning how to see.
zach teplin, magritte study 3, 2026
zach teplin, mirror 01, 2025