Peter Rauch: Substitute Object (1.3.1, 2.1.1, 3.1.1, 3.6.1, 2.1.2*)

From the Objects series

Photography, inkjet, 2013-2014

*Silver gelatin photograph, 2013-2014

Over the past decade, the series Objects has tended towards an understanding of the relationship between the object and the creative practice: what is the object of observation, of gaze, of interest? what is the result of creation? Substitute Object represents one of the stages in this development, marking the transition from a regime of seeing to a regime of looking. The focus has shifted from the attitude towards the object found or created, that is, from the grasping of something external, to the grasping of the grasping itself, that is, to the motive force of the creative practice, articulated through a difference. To start wtth, the object is something that can be grasped, seen, thought about, against which an active subject of the expression of the object's predicates can be constituted. With the shift to the Substitute Object, however, that object is transformed into something that grasps, sees, thinks, which means that the subject is cast as being heterogeneous, as staring vapidly at the materiality of the thinking object. In hindsight, the creative practice reveals the object as a relationship, as that which we create by searching — a noise, a distortion, an obstacle — and which turns out to be the key find, the creation that has been present throughout our quest but is only recognised at its end, as an enconuter, or more precisely, as an articulation of the difference between that which is sought and that which is found. What is created is created by being recognised in hindsight. The Substitute Object is the regressive formation or organisation of thought outside of a psychic structure, ejected into the worid.The Substitute Object is thought as object.

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Artist's web page: snabyrow.com