Beyond Reflection

Beyond Reflection is an inquiry into two distinct modes of thinking delineating two separate approaches and conceptions of the world and its objects. On one hand, we have reflection that repeats by mirroring and is sustained by mirror images, by a search for identity, and a desire for recognition, and on the other hand, we have what the author calls refraction, which breaks with the well-known and the mirror cabinet of sameness to give rise to the unrecognizable in the midst of recognition. What is opened in refraction emerges in Kølle´s work as a discrepancy between what is predictable and always locatable within the limited focus area of our predictions,and that which comes back altered and from another place than calculated or expected. It is these journeys into the unknown that Beyond Reflection investigates through a broad spectrum of examples ranging from the discoveries of Darwin to the psychoanalysis of Freud. The main focus of this book however is on artistic creation using modern poetry and painting - especially the works of Mallarmé and Manet - as prime examples of a malleable approach and an impressionable thinking that travels further than the immediate returns of reflection.