Desire is not a simple thing.
People talk about desire like it is only hunger, only wanting, only attraction. But desire is also anxiety. It is also control. It is also the need to be reassured. It is also the fear of missing something. It is also the wish to be chosen. It is also the wish to own what you admire so it cannot leave you.
When someone enters an art space, they bring desire with them. Even if they pretend they are neutral. Even if they pretend they are only observing. They want something. They want beauty. They want clarity. They want surprise. They want a story. They want emotion. They want to be moved. They want to be impressed. They want proof that art still matters. They want the artwork to do its job.
And when someone meets my work, I feel that desire arrive like a wave. Sometimes it is soft. Sometimes it is demanding. Sometimes it is playful. Sometimes it is hungry.
My practice is to catch that wave and turn it.
Not to cancel desire, but to reroute it.
Because I am not interested in feeding desire in the way the world feeds it. The world teaches desire to consume. To take. To finish. To scroll. To collect. To own. To get to the point quickly and then move on.
I want something different.
I want desire to slow down.
I want desire to become curious instead of hungry.
I want desire to become a form of listening.
So I reroute it through limits, through abstraction, through nothing, through disorientation, through visuals that do not behave like answers.
And I do that because I believe the most intimate encounters with art happen when the viewer cannot easily get what they think they want.
The first desire is always to receive. A viewer often enters wanting to receive something clear.
They want the image to speak. They want the object to declare itself. They want the work to deliver something they can take home inside their mind. They want a feeling they recognize. They want a conclusion.
That is normal. I do not mock it. I understand it.
But I also know that the quickest receiving is often the shallowest.
The work that gives itself immediately can be consumed immediately. And consumption is not the same as contact. Consumption is fast. Contact is slow. Consumption is satisfaction. Contact is risk.
So I build limits.
The limit is my first tool.
A limit can be physical. It can be a barrier. It can be a restricted view. It can be a distance you cannot cross. It can be a work you cannot photograph properly. It can be a piece you cannot fully see from one position.
A limit can also be emotional. A refusal to explain. A silence. A caption that does not clarify. A statement that opens questions instead of closing them.
When the viewer meets a limit, something happens.
They feel it in the body. A tiny frustration. A tiny pressure. The feeling of not getting what they expected. The feeling of being stopped.
That moment is precious to me.
Because it reveals desire.
It reveals what the viewer assumed they deserved. It reveals the expectation that art will deliver. It reveals how we have been trained to treat visual experience like a service.
And once desire is revealed, it can be rerouted.
A limit turns hunger into awareness.
It makes the viewer ask, why do I need this to be easy.
Why do I feel angry when I cannot see everything.
Why do I feel anxious when I cannot understand immediately.
Why do I want the work to behave.
That is the first rerouting. From consumption to self awareness.
Abstraction is a way of refusing capture. When I use abstraction, I am not trying to be distant. I am trying to protect complexity.
Abstraction allows the work to move without being pinned down. It refuses to become a single story. It refuses to become a simple symbol. It refuses to be read like a headline.
Sometimes people assume abstraction is cold. But for me, abstraction is emotional. It is the closest I can get to certain feelings without turning them into a literal scene that people will misunderstand.
Because literal images can become traps. People will see what they expect to see. They will project what they already believe. They will place the work into familiar categories and stop there.
Abstraction makes that harder.
It keeps the work open. It keeps the viewer unsettled. It forces a slower kind of looking, a slower kind of feeling.
It is another limit, but a softer one. A fog instead of a wall.
And fog has a strange effect on desire.
In fog, you cannot rush. You cannot take shortcuts. You have to move carefully. You have to pay attention. You have to accept that you will not have total control.
That is why I like it.
Abstraction reroutes desire from certainty to sensitivity.
It asks the viewer to feel their way through.
It asks them to admit, I do not know.
And I do not know is not failure. I do not know can be intimacy. It can be honesty. It can be a beginning.
Nothing is not empty, it is active. One of the strongest ways I reroute desire is with nothing.
Not dramatic nothing, not a loud empty room that screams concept. A quieter nothing. A subtle nothing. The kind of nothing that makes people lean forward, trying to see if they are missing something.
I like that leaning forward.
It is a physical sign of curiosity.
The viewer becomes active.
They stop being a consumer. They become a participant.
When there is less to see, the viewer’s own mind becomes louder. Their imagination starts to work. Their memory starts to fill gaps. Their attention sharpens. Their doubt rises.
Nothing creates a mirror.
It shows the viewer their own desire.
And again, this is not cruelty. It is a gift. It is an invitation to experience art as an inner event, not only an external object.
Because I believe some artworks do not live in the object at all. They live in the gap between object and viewer. They live in the friction. They live in what the viewer brings and what the work refuses to give.
Nothing is a limit that creates depth.
Nothing is a pause that lets desire transform.
Sometimes the viewer gets angry. They feel cheated. They feel that the work is too minimal, too abstract, too quiet. They want more. They want spectacle.
And that reaction is also part of the work.
Because it reveals how deeply we are trained to believe that value must be visible and loud.
But value can also be subtle.
A small shift in perception can be more valuable than a large spectacle.
A quiet work can be more haunting than a loud one.
So when I use nothing, I am rerouting desire away from spectacle and toward attention.
Toward listening.
Toward patience.
Toward the small internal movements we usually ignore.
Disorientation is a kind of honesty. I often create visuals of disorientation, especially for the curious viewer.
Not confusion for its own sake. Not tricks.
But a gentle destabilizing.
A refusal to give the eye a comfortable path.
A refusal to let the viewer stand in the center and feel in control.
Because the world is not always oriented. Life is not always centered. Identity is not always clear. Our inner lives are full of contradictions. Our memories do not line up neatly. Our emotions do not arrive in straight lines.
So why should art always be easy to navigate.
When I disorient, I am being honest about the condition of being human.
Disorientation can be visual. It can be spatial. It can be the way elements are arranged so the viewer cannot decide what is foreground and what is background. It can be the way the work resists a single viewpoint. It can be the way the work makes you feel slightly off balance.
And when you feel off balance, something changes. You become more aware of your own body. You become more aware of your own assumptions. You become more aware that seeing is not passive. It is an active act.
Disorientation reroutes desire from mastery to presence.
Many viewers want mastery. They want to be the one who understands. They want to be the one who sees the reference. They want to be the one who can explain it.
Disorientation interrupts mastery.
It invites humility.
It invites a different kind of desire. The desire to stay with not knowing. The desire to explore without claiming.
That is why I say it is for the curious viewer.
A curious viewer does not need to win. A curious viewer is willing to wander. A curious viewer is willing to be changed by the encounter.
My work is not for the viewer who wants to dominate. It is for the viewer who wants to listen.
Desire is not the enemy, but it needs a different direction. I do not hate desire. I am not trying to shame it. Desire is human. Desire is what makes people come to art in the first place.
But I do not want to feed desire in its most shallow form.
I do not want to give easy pleasure that disappears in five seconds. I do not want to give clear answers that stop the viewer from feeling. I do not want to produce images that satisfy the eye but leave the soul untouched.
So I reroute desire into something deeper.
Into longing instead of appetite.
Into curiosity instead of consumption.
Into attention instead of speed.
Into presence instead of certainty.
This is not always comfortable. Deep desire is not comfortable. Longing is not comfortable. Waiting is not comfortable. Not knowing is not comfortable.
But comfort is not the highest goal of art. At least it is not my goal.
My goal is contact.
The kind of contact that lingers.
The kind of contact that follows you home.
The kind of contact that returns days later while you are washing dishes or walking or lying awake.
To create that kind of contact, I sometimes have to disappoint the first desire.
The first desire is always, give me something now.
And I say, slowly.
Not now.
Not all at once.
I say, come closer, but not with ownership.
I say, look again.
I say, wait.
I say, feel what happens inside you when you do not get what you expected.
That is the rerouting.
I want to say something important. Limits are not always aggression. Limits can be care.
If I give the viewer everything immediately, I am treating them like a consumer. I am assuming they will take and leave.
When I set limits, I am assuming something more respectful. I am assuming the viewer can endure complexity. I am assuming the viewer can sit with uncertainty. I am assuming the viewer has depth.
That is care.
It is also care for myself. Because limits protect me from becoming a machine that must constantly produce satisfaction for others.
And limits protect the work. Because the work can be damaged by too much exposure. Too much explanation. Too much availability.
Sometimes the work needs privacy to remain powerful.
So I reroute desire through limits not to frustrate, but to create a different relationship.
A relationship where the viewer is not a customer, and I am not a service provider.
A relationship where the work is a shared space of attention.
The viewer who stays becomes part of the work. I often think about the difference between the viewer who passes and the viewer who stays.
The viewer who passes wants quick satisfaction. They want the work to give a clear reward. They want to know what it means. They want to be done with it.
The viewer who stays is different. They are willing to not know. They are willing to be challenged. They are willing to be quiet. They are willing to let the work move inside them slowly.
When I reroute desire, I am speaking to the viewer who stays.
I am creating a space for them.
A space where they do not have to perform understanding.
A space where they can be curious without shame.
A space where they can be disoriented and still feel respected.
Because disorientation can be exciting when you trust the artist. When you feel the disorientation is not a joke, not a trap, but a sincere invitation to see differently.
That is what I aim for.
I want to create disorientation that feels like stepping into a new kind of light.
Not a blackout.
A new light.
I have talked about limits, abstraction, nothing, disorientation. But the real reason I reroute desire is emotional.
I have a tenderness inside me that I do not want to turn into entertainment.
I have a quiet intensity inside me that does not survive loud demand.
I have a relationship with absence and refusal that is not only conceptual. It is personal. It comes from living in a world where being seen can be dangerous, where being misunderstood can be painful, where being available can lead to being consumed.
So I learned to control the approach.
I learned to guide the viewer not by shouting, but by withholding.
I learned to let the work protect itself.
When I reroute desire, I am also protecting a part of myself. The part that needs to remain free to create. The part that needs to remain private sometimes. The part that cannot live under constant evaluation.
And I do this because I still want connection.
Rerouting desire is not rejection. It is a way of creating a connection that is honest.
A connection that does not require me to give everything away.
A connection that does not require the viewer to pretend they understand.
A connection built on curiosity, not ownership.
I hope the viewer enters expecting a clear experience and instead meets a limit. A pause. A quietness. A disorientation.
I hope they feel the first frustration. The first desire to leave.
And then I hope something else happens.
I hope they breathe.
I hope they look again.
I hope they feel their own desire changing.
I hope the hunger becomes curiosity.
I hope the need for answers becomes attention.
I hope the work becomes a space where their own inner life can speak.
I hope they leave not with a neat sentence, but with a feeling that stays open.
That openness is the real work.
Because an open feeling keeps living. A closed explanation does not.
So yes.
I reroute desire with limits.
I reroute desire with abstraction.
I reroute desire with nothing.
I reroute desire with visuals that disorient the curious viewer.
I reroute desire away from consumption and toward contact.
Away from certainty and toward sensitivity.
Away from speed and toward presence.
And if you can follow that reroute, if you can accept the slow path, then the work will meet you in a different place than you expected.
Not as a product.
As an encounter.
As a quiet event inside your own attention. That is how I (re)route desire.