Object of Desire (After Man Ray) vol. 1
Object of Desire (After Man Ray) vol. 1
2025 – ongoing
Metronome with cutout image of eye on pendulum
Size Variable
May Ray’s readymade piece Object to be Destroyed depicts a subject that “has been loved but is seen no more”. The solitary eye, both haunting and hypnotic, embodies the profound desire to see and to be seen.
In Object of Desire (After Man Ray), I reimagine the Eye-Metronome as a mirror of the subjects our gaze is drawn to—those that dominate our visual world. The first edition, created in 2025, features an eye marked by the most prominent icon of the age of AI—an eye itself generated by artificial intelligence.
A new edition will follow every five years, each bearing the emblem of its time, a shifting reflection of contemporary visual culture, until it becomes an object that has been loved but is seen no more.
Film list of the accompany talk:
The Arrival of a Train by Auguste and Louis Lumière (1895)
The Kiss in the Tunnel by George Albert Smith (1899)
Train Again by Peter Tscherkassky (2021)
The Great Train Robbery by Edwin S. Porter (1903)
Odd Man Out by Carol Reed (1947)
Two or Three Things I Know About Her by Jean-luc
Taxi Driver by Martin Scorsese (1976)
Psycho by Alfred Hitchcock (1960)
pièce touché (1989) and passage à l’acte (1993) by Martin Arnold
Land Without Bread by Luis Buñuel (1933)
The Automobile Accident by Auguste and Louis Lumière (1905)
The Vanishing Lady by Georges Méliès (1896)
How It Feels to Be Run Over by Cecil M. Hepworth (1900)
Passion (2008) and The Depths (2010) by Ryusuke Hamaguchi
May Ray’s readymade piece Object to be Destroyed depicts a subject that “has been loved but is seen no more”. The solitary eye, both haunting and hypnotic, embodies the profound desire to see and to be seen.
In Object of Desire (After Man Ray), I reimagine the Eye-Metronome as a mirror of the subjects our gaze is drawn to—those that dominate our visual world. The first edition, created in 2025, features an eye marked by the most prominent icon of the age of AI—an eye itself generated by artificial intelligence.
A new edition will follow every five years, each bearing the emblem of its time, a shifting reflection of contemporary visual culture, until it becomes an object that has been loved but is seen no more.