Contemporary Abstract Paintings on Canvas: Mimetic Desire
Abstract Canvas Art Series · 2024
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Abstract paintings exploring René Girard's theory of mimetic desire, how we unconsciously borrow the desires of others and lose our own path in the process.
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Mixed media works where yarn, LEGO bricks, and fractured geometry map the tangle
of imitation, rivalry, and irritation.
Hoddg y Kacciann
Acrylic, color tape, yarn, LEGO brick on stretched canvas 91 x 91 cm - 36"x 36", USA, 2024
Available
Teqqmunnn carre
Acrylic, color tape, yarn, LEGO brick on stretched canvas 91 x 91 cm - 36"x 36", USA, 2024
Available
Flasjback Oddenaa
Acrylic, color tape, yarn, LEGO brick on stretched canvas 91 x 91 cm - 36"x 36", USA, 2024
Available
Resshmaa
Acrylic, color tape, yarn, LEGO brick on stretched canvas 91 x 91 cm - 36"x 36", USA, 2024
Available
Mimetic Desire is a series of abstract paintings on canvas built around René Girard's insight
that human desire is not autonomous, it is borrowed. We want what others want.
We imitate before we choose. And in that imitation, rivalry ignites.
These paintings map that tension: the pull of imitation, the frustration of the obstacle,
the irritation of the double.
Plus one Aggvaa
Acrylic, color tape, yarn, LEGO brick on stretched canvas 91 x 91 cm - 36"x 36", USA, 2024
Available
Sol Garrneaau
Acrylic, color tape, yarn, LEGO brick on stretched canvas 91 x 91 cm - 36"x 36", USA, 2024
Available
Priori Ehurraaa
Acrylic, color tape, yarn, LEGO brick on stretched canvas 91 x 91 cm - 36"x 36", USA, 2024
Available
“We desire what others desire because we imitate their desires.”
René Girard
About the theme of Mimetic Desire
Mimetic Desire is a series where I explore the concept outlined by philosopher René Girard, the idea that
human desire is not born from within, but borrowed
from the desires of others.
We look to those around us to know what to want.
We imitate their choices, their ambitions, their values, often without realizing it.
And as we converge on the same objects of desire,
rivalry emerges. The model becomes the obstacle.
In these paintings, acrylic color creates a dense, shifting backdrop, and the societal pressures and borrowed desires that saturate our choices.
Black yarn, interwoven across the surface in loops
and intersections, traces the tangled web of imitation: how we mirror others' desires, how those threads pull us away from authentic, self-determined paths.
The LEGO bricks were scattered and arranged across
Each canvas represents the building blocks of identity constructed in response to external influences, lives built according to others' designs rather than our own.
The emotion throughout is negative and forceful: irritation.
The irritation of being caught in someone else's desire.
The irritation of the obstacle that used to be the model.
The irritation of not knowing where imitation ends
and selfhood begins.
