James Hillman. Don't Mistake My Finger for the Moon

The Spinozian metaphor also underpins the work that constitutes the second core of the exhibition and gives it its title, Don't Mistake My Finger for the Moon (2023). From a formal perspective, the movement of the membranes creates convexities and concavities that generate an image reminiscent of the illusory waves described by Spinoza in his metaphor, likewise set in motion by a single, immanent entity (the camshaft motor). The work consists of an industrial PVC tube sealed at both ends with glossy black rubber membranes. Inside, a system of pistons connected to a motor alternately pushes and pulls the air contained within the tube, expanding and contracting the membranes at the rhythm of a human breath. The movement of the membranes unfolds through a dynamic of opposition: when internal pressure pushes air toward one end, one membrane expands while the other contracts, and vice versa.

This interplay of cause and effect visualizes the interdependencies inherent in any cyclical system, in which every addition or subtraction of matter in one part inevitably produces consequences in another. A full understanding of this relationship, both formally and conceptually, is possible only by observing the work in its entirety and from a distance.

The representative image of the work—constantly mutating and generated by an invisible “perpetual motion,” perceptible through the emission of a repetitive sound—reappears in the convexities and concavities of Figure/Ground (2025). Here, Hillman highlights the limits of human perception by focusing exclusively on the essential nature of form and its relationship with the surrounding environment. These works are formal investigations into the reciprocal relationship between pictorial surface, sculptural structure, and the characteristics of the space they inhabit.

Hillman emphasizes the relationship between hue and chromatic value, light and shadow, painting the areas of light and dark generated by concave and convex forms, amplified through chromatic contrasts. The resulting works profoundly alter human perception, in some lighting conditions even completely negating volume.

In line with the Cubist intent to unify figure and ground, in Figure/Ground image and support become interdependent: what is represented is simultaneously surface, light, and shadow generated by the form of the work itself. This new series, like much of Hillman's practice, draws inspiration from American Minimalism, embracing its desire to focus on matter and form without philosophical implications, conceived purely as a study of the relationship between object and surrounding space—an outcome that, in certain phases, is softened by the artist's belonging to a more symbolically oriented European context.

The exhibition project invites viewers to reflect on both formal and conceptual levels without hierarchy, while alluding—following Wallace Stevens's central concept of the thing itself—to the creation of an environment in which magic occurs when the plain sense of things radiates toward the viewer. It further encourages moving beyond abstraction in favor of a direct relationship with the object, which, when contemplated, is itself capable of generating aesthetic and spiritual experiences arising from subjective sensory perception.