A two-hander

In a series of works dating from 2013–2014, the British painter Andy Harper ‘doubles’ painted images using a direct form of contact printing. This operation on the part of the painter brings together the traditional practice of painting with the purely mechanical act of printing, a doubling of the image. The accompanying text considers the principle of symmetry implied in this act, through a reading of Kant’s early philosophy of space and the crucial role played in it by the notion of ‘handedness’ or orientation.