The limits of the visible. For a microphysics of painting

Abstract

Few years ago, Gerhard Richter painted a pictorial cycle in which the theme of the visibility of reality is brought into question. In Silikat, an image obtained through the scanning electron microscope is translated on the pictorial surface, which offers nothing other than the visible limit of the physical composition of matter. The surface of the painting shows the "clouds" of silicate atoms, with that particular phase shift vibration generated by the "inaccuracy/uncertainty" (blurring, Unschärfe) principle, mathematically formulated by Heisenberg. We thus face an image that gives us the ultimate vision of reality that physics makes available to us, whose determination forces us to admit that the composition of the world is nothing more than this evanescent electronic fluctuation of energy. The limit of matter/world thus coincides with the limit which articulates the distiction between visible and invisible. The practice of painting, the place where the visibility of the world shows itself, entrusts to dwell on the last limit of the invisible.