In Seeing the Sun through closed Eyes, Dirk Eicken searches for the possibilities of painting under the condition of its failure. In doing so, he translates the historical break with referentiality and the image by breaking up the hierarchy of layers in a peculiar way: In the works from three series from the last 10 years, the picture surface is dehierachized insofar as it is reconsidered as an error-prone, determined form of mediation that pushes itself to the fore as just one of many layers of perception. The failure of referential representation thus turns the explicit question of correct seeing, as Picasso still had it in mind when he compared painting with the mirror and the camera, into the question of incorrect seeing or of a failed way of seeing: What do we miss when we see?

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