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Juan Downey's video tape is inspired by semiology, the study of meaning. He tackles, among other things, the relation between language and image, as did Barthes in his book 'Mythologies'. Downey wilfully and intruigingly shows us how concepts gain meaning. His motif, the mirror, has both linguistic and iconographic significance and complexity. Mirrors and the maker reflect. He shows us examples of applications of reflection in Western architecture and visual arts. Art historians tend to talk reflectively about the Mirror Room at Versailles and the mirrors in works by Velasquez and Vermeer. Downey mildly ridicules the guide who explains, the explanations and the reflections while referring with inventive genius to what Barthes calls the myth which hides behind images and concepts. The way in which images and paintings are explained is in itself also a myth.
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