"Form has a meaning," writes Henri Focillon in The Life of Forms in Art, "but it is a meaning entirely its own, a personal and specific value that must not be confused with the attributes we impose upon it." And this is a good rule in regards to Duren's paintings, as it prohibits us from simplifying his work and turning it into something akin to decoration or blind pleasure. This interior meaning also prohibits us from indulging in the translation of visual forms merely as a psychological exploration based on expression.

But what meaning can possibly be derived from the shifting of spatial planes, the pushing and pulling of color and shape, or the tilting and collapsing of perspective? Perhaps it is through the activity of formal analysis - the performance of looking at constructed space - that we can begin to see the direction in which these paintings lean.

In the book, Space and Place, the geographer Yi Fu Tuan writes, "In experience, the meaning of space often merges with that of place. 'Space' is more abstract than 'place.' What begins as undifferentiated space becomes place as we get to know it better and endow it with value."