This project takes the form of an investigation into the speculative object as proposed by Alain Robbe Grillet through his fictional writing and its use as a means for articulating the developments and propositions in my practice. The Object, which is considered through the dual statements in the title, is deployed and tested through examination and example to be considered as a viable and useful mechanism for the consideration of my studio work and thesis enquiry. Robbe Grillet’s Object, at the center of this enquiry, is considered through its material, physical, mute characteristics and impulses, and is tested against a selection of artist’s and writer’s enquiries that might be considered to be working with ‘the object’ with a degree of correlation and sympathy to Robbe Grillet’s intentions.

The question begins with the establishment of figural indeterminacy of the object that is the result of Robbe Grillet’s neutralising and repetitive objectification. The implications of this strategy are then developed through notions of the fragment, and in particular, Georges Didi Huberman’s proposal of the Patch as an agitating necessity in a formal field. This question is then applied to the Mottled screen as presented by Proust and explored by Mieke Bal. These proposals are in turn questioned as viable approaches to engaging with, and the production of, artwork. In particular, whether it is possible to evolve a spatial dialectic which functions as both immediate source for an embodied experience and as a sign and symptom to be decoded. Is it feasible to generate space around the ‘object as fragment’, which becomes open and transformative through the viewers collaboration.

In considering the use of the fragment as presented by Robbe Grillet as a structural and symbolic device in his writing I have developed a set of fragmentary propositions for the structure of the text to follow. These ‘fragment chapters’ are intended to elide or fold together as separate and collaborative elements. Under a series of chapter headings my intention is to explore sections and elements of the enquiry that use as starting points formal and pictorial manifestations which are then opened out into broader discussions. These debates loop back and across with the implication that they reflect the habit of description in Robbe Grillet’s writing.