nesne—object //

The form here is carved on one side and cut at a specific angle on the other, so that it leans against the wall of the physical space. When leaned against the wall, its phallic shape becomes more pronounced, while at the same time, it gives the wall a tactile effect. The shaped form and the wall—these two physical phenomena—gain bodily meaning through the methods of shaping and positioning. At the same time, when removed (or torn) from the wall, it carries references to an ordinary object and stands autonomously on the floor. It may either remain propped against something or lie idly on the ground in search of a place to belong.

As previously mentioned, the things that the subject senses as lacking in their body are perceived through the qualities of the visible, readily available object in front of them. Through a formal intervention, the subject attributes bodily characteristics to the object, and in the moment of developing empathy, may begin to think of themselves as an object as well—despite knowing that they are not—via oppositional concepts such as being hard and static.

The act of shaping with the body (cutting, creating modular units, assembling parts like a body) first involves the fragmentation of bodily features (the torso, arms, legs, and other limbs), transferring them into a composition of the hard and fixed, and rendering them visible.

By empathy, what is meant is that the acting subject or the viewer tries to put themselves in the place of the object—tries to be that object. In the course of this experience, something is lost. Since the subject cannot fully grasp either themselves or the object in front of them, they inevitably assign what is familiar within themselves to what they encounter. The most significant attribution here is not a figuration of the human body in a formal sense, but rather positioning the object in a subjective role. The placement of forms within the space in multiple possible configurations is meant to make this condition visible.

What this form tries to express is that it is not a figurative representation of a penis. In Lacan’s theory, the penis as part of the body is, in psychoanalytic terms, merely symbolized—it is the signifier. Following Lacan, this form concerns itself more with confronting and revealing the laws of the Father—i.e., the cultural and artistic conventions, the implicit habits underlying image production.

“The subject encounters the world as a spectacle that possesses it. In this, they fall victim to a trap, and what confronts the subject, what appears to emerge from them and meets them face to face, is not the real a, but its complementary reflective image, i(a). That which seems to be lost or lacking is precisely this. The subject surrenders to the spectacle, delights in it, derives pleasure from it.”
(Lacan, 2017. On the Names-of-the-Father, p. 74)

The expression that this form aims to develop avoids circling around its themes, and instead seeks to bring forth—through action and pure form—the fundamental, the latent, the hidden. Ultimately, the laws of the Father, as the determiners of cultural codes, are turned back upon themselves. In this sense, the phallus-resembling form does not function as an illusion of ideal completeness offered to the subject via aesthetic experience. On the contrary, through the shared conditions of a physical space where both subject and form coexist, it evokes the experience of physical lack—of being severed and cast to the ground—while simultaneously revealing the cultural symbolic system and elevating it to a formal level.

Therefore, this form does not habitually gravitate toward the ideal, pleasure-giving image—i(a)—as Lacan would put it. On the contrary, through pure action, it discloses what kinds of laws and cultural codes structure this ideal. Since, in Lacanian terms, reaching the real object a is not directly possible within worldly conditions, the geometric side of the form, as well as its carved, organic and tactile side, continues to invoke the imaginal. But in doing so, it also hints at how cultural aesthetics are constructed and how they serve this system externally.