Contemporary photographer Miho Skvrce first created a series of Polaroids titled On the Edges of Reality (2018 – onwards) where he captured a reflection of reality in a blurred glass, by placing it in abandoned sites across the world. Now he continues the work using the same technique, in the Outlines of the Sea Reflections (2023 – onwards). In the Outlines series (unlike in the previous one) he uses color Polaroids, and only captures the sea in the glass reflection. He photographs in-between spaces, exploring the invisible in the visible. The process of labeling is silent. In photographic images, ontological plans are intertwined. Refined perception is the process of documenting the atmospheres of mysterious structures. Various outlines and forms of the blue are staged in the depths, distances, voids and infinities. It is a metaphysical work-in-progress that encodes a multilayered perception. Scenes are created of reflections of a world depicted as an area of pacifism and primordial power/softness of spirit. An entire universal expanse of peace is delineated here.
Skvrce’s works are reduced to a surface state that has its specific aesthetic and spiritual level. They establish a gentle but keen gaze into the symbolism of blue. Blue is also the least material color: in nature it is usually depicted as if it were made of transparency, that is, of accumulated emptiness, emptiness of air, water, crystals, or diamonds. The void is accurate, clean and cold. [...] Being immaterial in itself, the blue color dematerializes everything that gets caught in it. It is the road to infinity, where the real transforms into the imaginary. [...] The color blue is not of this world: it points to the notion of a peaceful and sublime eternity...[1]
A sophisticated and sacred silence is created. It is always present in the human being, in the world and the cosmos; it is always marked.
Spiritual maps are drawn up: Skvrce creates a map of the world by encoding the vastness of the spirit. Light is the vigilance of the human being and as such is presented in polaroids. Aestheticized blue and azure atmospheres are recorded as evidence and documents of the depths of an interior existence. Awareness of the paths of desire is self-realization. Self-knowledge is the beginning of meditation.[2] These are meditative scenes that immediately develop as the codes of 'meditation in blue'. The world is seen as a dead noise, abolished error, murdered darkness. The features of Zen are there: spontaneity, simplicity, calmness and solitude. Scenes are spaces in which we discover levels of perception and come to realizations. The mind is capable of freeing itself from the conditioning of any kind, and only then is it free to discover what lies beyond the realm of thought (Krishnamurti). It is about the universal essence of being, it is about openness to the cosmic position in the reflection of infinity. Proper thinking comes with self-knowledge. Without understanding yourself, you have no basis for thought; without self-knowledge what you think is not truthful.[3] Merlau-Ponty says that philosophy is not a reflection of some previous truth, but an art, an opening of truth. Truth in the reflection of the color of wisdom and eternity is depicted in the work of Miho Skvrca. Truth can never wither because it can live in every thought, in every relationship, in every word, in every gesture, in every smile, in every tear. And if you and I can find that – living itself means finding it – then we are not going to become propagandists, we're going to be creative human beings – not perfect human beings, but creative ones, which is a very different thing.[4] Skvrce creates threads of the absolute; with a subtle handwriting he captures a gentle insight into the very essence of things. ... Even in the finality of survival and its limitations and external necessity, the spirit cannot find an immediate scene and enjoy its true freedom, so it is compelled to fulfill the need for this freedom on a different, higher plane. That plane is art, and the ideal is its reality.[5]