These would be the successive phases of the image: It is the reflection of a profound reality. It masks and denatures a profound reality. It masks the absence of a profound reality. It has no relation to any reality whatsoever: it is its own pure simulacrum.1
The replica of Michelangelo's Two Struggling Figures has an almost imposter-like awareness of itself. After all, replicas are imitations of the Real–they are doppelgangers that have assumed the original object’s form and memory, masquerading as their living counterparts. There is a degree of malevolent presence within their existence, even an intention to imitate and replace any memory of the other. But perhaps there is a certain unintentional innocence within this particular figure.
The series of castings traverse four successive phases, demonstrating the gradual deterioration of the object’s original image into abstracted simulacra. Through gradual distortion and eventual absence of the original image, the resulting series of objects become “simulacrum of a presence that dislocates”2 the histories of a now forgotten original form.
