When I Look into Your Eyes I See the Sun

Raúl de Nieves

When I Look into Your Eyes I See the Sun, 2018

168 × 192 × 192 inches
Courtesy of the artist, Company Gallery, New York, Production Art Fund, and Bulgari

Audio:
Hairbone (Raúl de Nieves, Jessie Stead, Nathan Whipple)
Bells For The Rogue Wave, 2020
Arranged by Jessie Stead
Digital audio
Courtesy of the artists

---

Multiple concepts of time are collapsed into de Nieves’s working carousel, titled When I Look into Your Eyes I See the Sun. The mechanically propelled carousel completes its orbiting spin in a circular pattern, echoing the progress of the planets around the sun in daily, monthly, and yearly cycles. The snake, which winds itself between the carousel’s horse-like creatures, brings Biblical time into the conversation and serves as another reference to Saint George’s dragon. The ouroboros also becomes a symbol of cyclical renewal. The idea of time’s passage and human development is demonstrated by the other figures on the carousel—progressing from birth to childhood, maturing into adulthood, and declining into old age—while the carousel moves in its consistent, circular course.

–Risa Puleo, Curator