Marine Chimeras

The beauty of the marine object lies in its amorous life, its constant workmanship, constantly desired and smoothed by the sea. When we approach the sea, we are always looking for something that can give us something. By the sea, we become more curious. Something pushes us to constantly search.

From a theoretical point of view, Steven Meek's exhibition stimulates a reading oriented towards the psychoanalytic theory of Jacques Lacan, exploring the concept of "l'objet petit a", the unattainable object of desire that catalyzes human psychic dynamics. In this context, the objects recovered by the artist from the seas—mainly plastics and metals, witnesses of the culture of consumption and waste—are transformed into fascinating totems. From scraps they become corals or embedded pearls.

Despite the love for these residues, the objects created by Meek never turn into sentimental post-vacation bricolages but maintain a sobriety linked to American minimalism, recovering the geometries of Donald Judd and the monumental scrap metal of John Chamberlain. In the context of the sculptures, realism manifests itself in the unmediated presence of the materials used. They are indigestible objects that resist complete assimilation and a certain aura of violence persists. The sculptures thus become nodes where different bands of light intertwine, each piece acting as a convergence point for the tensions between loss and new desire, between the attraction to objects and their real inadequacy.

Milos Zahradka Maiorana