Photograph of a detail of Roberto Chabet's Untitled 2005 (Notes on Johannes Vermeer), Magnet Gallery, Paseo, 5 - 26 July 2005.

The two clipboards hold a photograph showing the basement of Pupin Hall at Columbia University, where the first experiment on nuclear fission in the US was held in 1939, which Chabet also used as the image for the invitation to the exhibition, and a text on the experiment conducted by scientist Enrico Fermi.

One of the works in the exhibition is a large painting based on the photograph of the basement, onto which several small paintings, each with an embedded harmonica, are attached. Beside the painting are four neon signs - 'The room, The window, The letter, The map' - taken from recurring details in Vermeer's paintings.

Other works include an installation composed of GI sheets, an open leather trunk filled with mirrors laid on a carpet, facing a neon sign that spells 'Vermeer', and a pale blue painting accompanied by a conch shell, which is painted with the same color.

Prior to this work, Chabet also completed a trilogy of works which pay homage to Dutch artists. In this work, Chabet deconstructs and reconfigures Vermeer’s world into a tableau that meditates on 'the act of looking and the complex and overlapping processes of interpretation and perception.'

The press release of the exhibition states, Chabet wrote 'the act of looking never fails to posit dilemmas in art such that instead of searching for solutions; it gives birth to whole new movements. The reconfigured objects is a reenactment of their own history with its own perceived space congealing into a tableau of painting. The installation is an emblem of a world transformed into an image beholden to its maker.'