James Turrell, Rothko, Twombly: The Time of the Gaze

The article 'Il tempo dello sguardo | Differimento, traccia e impossibilità della presenza' (The Time of the Gaze | Deferral, Trace, and Impossibility of Presence) is a philosophical essay published on segnonline.it, the online platform of the Italian art magazine Segno. It examines the concept of visual perception through the lens of Jacques Derrida's deconstruction, particularly the notions of différance and trace. The essay argues that the act of seeing is not a transparent capture of reality but a differential interplay where the observer and the observed emerge together in a network of references. It discusses how presence is always deferred and how the image is constituted through a temporal dislocation. The text references specific artworks and artists to illustrate these ideas: an immersive room by James Turrell, where a color field appears to dissolve external references, creating a sensory suspension; the color fields of Mark Rothko, where pigment stratification produces a vibration at the boundary of form; and the iterations of Cy Twombly, which embody intrinsic tension. The essay concludes that the image is defined by its auto-difference, an open interval that every examination traverses without exhausting. The article is authored by an unnamed writer and was published on segnonline.it, with the title repeated as 'Il tempo dello sguardo | Differimento, traccia e impossibilità della presenza'.