The competition myth between fourth-century painters Zeuxis & Parrhasius is a good place to start thinking about objects & subjects. Zeuxis made a painting of grapes that were so realistic that birds attempted to eat them. Feeling super confident about his hyper-realism, Zeuxis headed over to Parrhasius’ studio where he had presented a painting that hid behind a curtain. Zeuxis sashayed over to lift the curtain, but discovered in shock, awe, defeat, that the curtain was in fact the painting itself. In psychoanalysis there is always something behind the object, whether a repressed something hidden in the partial truth of the symptom, or transmuted in the partial lie of the fetish. Being human is to be enticed by what may be behind the surface. Psychoanalysis is a way to orient oneself towards the subject hiding behind the object, something that the speculative realists have a problem with. At The Complex Dublin, we are asked to PAY NO ATTENTION TO THAT MAN BEHIND THE CURTAIN. Of course the injunction makes us want to look all the more (as I did), even though in an art context we kinda know that it’s Parrhasius’ curtain all over again. Eleanor McCaughey’s and Lucy Sheridan’s curtains are sheer and open, so everything is partially on display and in translucent sight. No truths or lies or competing claims for territory or identity, which dissolve under the weight of the Oz references, original and The Return. I project Ciara Roche’s emerald green Mulholland Drive couch at the RHA into the space, where the two artists sit together and extrude the essence of the film in an emerald green glimmer that brushes the pearlescent gauze draped from on high; the cul de sac labyrinth; the soundscape, everything melting and sharding to become them and not them. I think shattered mirrors was a thing in The Return🏴