The neoliberal imperative of self‑optimization serves only to promote perfect functioning within the system. Inhibitions, points of weakness and mistakes are to be therapeutically eliminated in order to enhance efficiency and performance. In turn, everything is made comparable and measurable and subjected to the logic of the market. It is not concern for the good life that drives self‑optimization. Rather, self-optimisation follows from systemic constraints — from the logic of quantifying success on the market.
Byung-Chul Han, Psychopolitics: Neoliberalism & New Technologies of Power
Debt Wish interrogates the paradox of ‘wellness’ in a world increasingly mediated by shameless marketing, digital aesthetics and self-optimisation. Drawing from the visual and ideological languages of finance and wellness culture, Debt Wish reflects on our collective drive to optimise, purify and pay off oneself, until nothing remains but an echo of productivity.
Within this economy of self-improvement, Debt Wish considers how online spaces prey upon vulnerability, turning care into consumption and optimisation into obligation. Corporations and their algorithms constantly promise transformation, while quietly feeding on debt, attention and desire. The pursuit of wellness becomes both a coping mechanism and a trap, creating endless feedback loops where value is extracted from exhaustion.
Central to Debt Wish sits a human-like fountain, an empty vessel locked in a perpetual state of self-cleaning, the hollow form becomes a surrogate body stripped of identity, yet subjected to an endless cycle of improvement. Nearby, a broken mailbox reveals a small ghostly figure, fossilised inside like a pending message or a latent threat. Backed by a bright green wall, a colour often associated with currency, toxicity and wellness culture, the sterile nature of the sculptures is amplified. Meditative yet unsettling, the installation examines cycles of purification, depletion and the haunting persistence of value. The artworks become stand-ins for the self, stripped of identity yet compelled to endlessly renew themselves.
Bio
Alex de Roeck’s practice establishes ideological dialogues between systems of value, identity and corruption through sculpture, assemblage and drawing. Working primarily with hand sculpted plastics and found materials he deems ‘cultural debris’, he creates semi-figurative artworks that echo the artificial nature of his subject matter. In his recent works, the motif of the cliched Irish leprechaun (Ireland’s unelected mascot) becomes a recurring theme, often used as a persona or a ‘character skin’ to explore themes close to the artist like national identity and the rise of ‘the grifter’ in online spaces.
This work is supported by Fingal County Council Arts Office and The Arts Council.
Image: Alex de Roeck, Messenger, 2025, Polycaprolactone (PCL), steel, chain, Image courtesy of the artist.
instagram : @alex.deroeck
