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Where Shall We Put the Azalea, Darling?

I have a working knowledge of the artist’s practice. He was a former student of mine, and I have followed the subsequent development of his work by attending his exhibitions. He has funding for a publication dedicated to his work, and he invites me to contribute. I visit him in his studio to discuss his work. I ask him to send me a short statement that includes certain key words that he thinks might characterise important aspects of his work. I also ask him to send me some images of his work for reference. I do not know which specific works will be included in the publication, so I decide to ‘distil’ the essence of his oeuvre, as I understand it as a result of my research. The key themes that emerge from my process of reflection are: the conceptual constructs that allow us to differentiate sculpture, architecture and nature from each other. I realise that these are themes that have been addressed by Heidegger, so I reread the relevant passages of this philosopher’s work. I am keen that, in keeping with its referents, the text should convey a sense of absurdity and apparent irrationality, whilst retaining a sense of narrative coherence. I want the text to be ‘writerly’ in Barthes’s sense: i.e. it should demand a degree of imaginative work on the part of the reader in order for its relevance to be understood. I also want the text to retain a high degree of autonomy: whilst it refers to external referents (the artist’s works and their material and conceptual specificities), it is also has an independent existence of its own. I wish to construct an allegory. I am mindful of Borges’s short fictions.