The Unending Story [Historia sin fin]

Liliana Porter’s art is traversed by a deep concern for language, which shapes works like this one in unexpected ways. Her favorite writer is her compatriot Jorge Luis Borges, known for blurring the line between reality and illusion in his stories. Porter plays with this idea by combining two-dimensional images with three-dimensional objects glued onto the canvas, the latter demanding close observation to be perceived as volumetric. She further challenges our perception of the real by visually quoting another writer, Lewis Carroll. The main character in "Alice in Wonderland" grapples with a confusing dreamlike world she found on the other side of the mirror. Such interest in language also shaped the way Porter arranged objects on the canvas, as if they were a sentence written on a page whose corner lifts slightly near the bottom edge.