Watercolor on paper

30 × 21 cm

I was thirteen when I drew two faces approaching each other. I didn't yet know I was drawing an empty vessel.

Gestalt psychology teaches us that form doesn't reside in the object, but in the space between what we see and what we are. Ground and figure alternate, dance, reveal and conceal one another. Rubin's vase is famous precisely because it forces us to choose: two profiles or a vase? The answer is that the question is wrong.

In O Beijo [The Kiss], I returned to an adolescent gesture with an invitation to growth. The meeting of two faces creates, in the interval between them, the curve of a chalice. Love and the vessel of love become the same thing.

It is the same in Bhakti: the lover and the beloved, Radha and Krishna, do not merge. They complete each other. The difference between Them, the Supreme Couple, is not separation — it is the sacred space where love exists. Without distance, there is no desire. Without desire, there is no devotion.

The kiss is not the end of the space between two. It is the space between two becoming form.