Coué 1 is an animated sculpture that hypnotically highlights the self-motivating leitmotiv of the ‘Coué Method’: “Every day, in every way, I’m getting better and better.”This is the mantra that is repeated by different male and female voices in the soundtrack – first in an incomprehensible painfully slow slur, becoming clear and speeding up into a drilling hilarious sounding high pitching spin, as if helium had been inhaled. This work was commissioned by the Association GEF Psy in Nancy under the aegis of the Fondation de France in order to commemorate Emile Coué (1857-1926) who was a French behavioral psychologist and pharmacist who particularly studied the effects of positive thinking. Séchas also created a Monument to Jacques Lacan in 2002 featuring the cat, his house-style character.

Sculpture (Sculpture)

Office Work by Walead Beshty consists of a partially deconstructed desktop monitor screen, cleanly speared through its center onto a metal pole. Despite its dismantled form, the screen still functions, a simple, mountain-range desktop background clearly visible with no distortion. As with much of Beshty’s work, Office Work thematizes its own construction, in this case, through a clearly deconstructive action that preserves the technological ontology present through the monitor.