Duality of Light: The Ephemeral Cube

Claude Monet’s  Poplars on the Banks of the River Epte (1891) is a meditation on rhythm and reflection, where nature and water become inseparable in the Impressionist dance of color and movement. Monet painted the poplars as they swayed with the passing breeze, their forms mirrored upon the river’s surface, dissolving into the currents of light and time. It was a study of impermanence, of the way nature exists not in singularity but in transition, always shifting, always becoming.  

This conceptual minimalist reinterpretation distills that essence into its purest contrast—light and shadow, presence and absence, color and void. The poplars are no longer confined to canvas; they exist within a glasslike cube, a suspended moment of duality where time itself has been split into two states. On one side, the scene is drained of warmth, its form reduced to grayscale, as if captured in memory, as if frozen in a space before color. The trees, water, and sky remain, but they are stripped of their vibrancy, existing as echoes of what once was.  

On the opposite side, the poplars reawaken in radiant hues, their golden leaves catching the afternoon light, their reflections shimmering in the river below. The world is alive once more, pulsing with warmth and motion. Yet this is not merely a shift in color—it is a shift in perception, in time, in presence. The cube itself acts as a boundary, a container of transformation, where the same landscape exists in two states simultaneously. It is both past and present, both fading and vibrant, both recalled and immediate.  

The polished surface of the cube reflects the light that surrounds it, turning the artwork into something interactive, something that responds to its environment. It does not just present an image—it asks the viewer to move, to see it from different angles, to witness how perspective alters meaning. The reflections of the gallery, the light of the room, the movement of the observer—all become part of the piece, blurring the line between the artwork and the act of viewing.  

Color, or the absence of it, becomes the defining element of this interpretation. Monet’s luminous greens and soft blues are carefully preserved within one half of the cube, while the other half is stripped of warmth, reduced to shadows and diffused light. The contrast is stark yet harmonious, reminding us that perception is not fixed, that beauty exists both in vibrancy and in silence.  

As an artist, my intention with this piece was to explore the way memory functions—how we recall moments in fragments, how certain images linger in full color while others fade into abstraction. Monet painted the poplars as fleeting moments of light, knowing that the trees themselves would eventually be cut down. Here, that transience is given form, suspended between two realities, captured in a space where past and present exist together but never touch.  

The cube itself represents containment, an effort to preserve what is inherently ungraspable. Nature cannot be frozen in time, yet here, the poplars persist, caught between the dissolution of monochrome and the radiance of full bloom. The river still flows, yet it does not move. The trees still reach upward, yet they are enclosed. The landscape exists in two states, reminding us that every moment contains both presence and loss, both memory and reality.  

This piece is not just about trees, nor just about water—it is about the nature of seeing, about how light shapes our understanding, about how the same world can appear entirely different depending on where we stand. Through this composition, I wanted to evoke the sensation of looking through time itself, of witnessing beauty both in its clarity and in its fading, of understanding that nothing is ever just one thing—it is always both.