Melting Targets
The series Melting Targets is a long-term exploration of change, time, and intention. Each work begins with a simple process: coloured ice melts on canvas. What follows is a play between control and surrender — between purposeful action and the randomness of physical processes.
Conceptually, the series revolves around the setting of goals — and how those goals may disappear or shift over time. Humans continuously set goals, strive towards them, and leave traces in the process, regardless of whether the goal is achieved. This idea gains an additional layer in connection to climate goals: despite global efforts, the polar caps and glaciers continue to melt relentlessly.
Transformations
MT.4 Paintings in Motion
2026 - MT.4.8. Scoring with Goals
This work began during the exhibition Transformation Studio no. 1 in 2024. I started with a square canvas measuring 150 × 150 cm, onto which drops of melting ice paint in green and white were allowed to flow.
Lines referring to a football field were then added, introducing an initial image of demarcation, direction, and play.
Back in my studio, I expanded the work by sewing two additional canvases onto it. For this, I used earlier works: Shooting Apples for Dogfoot (2004) and Warning Bullet (2003), both already connected to ideas of goals, aiming, and shooting. Front and back were deliberately employed; Warning Bullet was placed on the reverse, while lines from that work were compositionally enlarged and reappeared within the overall structure.
In this way, the painting developed into a layered field in which play, goal orientation, and reuse converge.
2026 - MT.4.5. The Scissors
What began in 2024 as a process during the exhibition Transformation Studio No. 1 (2024) has evolved in my studio into a confrontation between textiles and ideology.
The canvas MT.3.2 was transformed into a sewing pattern for a 'brownshirt' — a loaded symbol of totalitarian attire.
On the reverse side, I have attached the work ‘Cutting History’ (2003). At its center, a pair of scissors cuts through film strips: a reference to the systematic excision of history by totalitarian regimes, as described in Orwell’s 1984.
Amidst icons of radicalization and decay, small scissors are painted onto the pattern, allowing the shirt to be symbolically cut out. ‘The Scissors’ thus exposes the mechanisms of political manipulation and the contemporary loss of historical consciousness.
MT.4 Paintings at Rest
2025 - MT.4.4. The people follow
- 2025: Started a blank canvas. (150 × 150 cm) with the words 'Het volk volgt' (The people follow).
2025 - MT.4.2 White Flag Over a Russian Landscape
- 2025: addition of the flag and extra colors.
- A canvas I started during the exhibition Transformatiestudio No. 1 in 2024. (150 × 150 cm)
2025 - MT.4.6. Gleeuw
- GLEEUW: a portmanteau of the words 'geeuw' (yawn) en 'leeuw' (lion).
- A canvas I started during the exhibition Transformatiestudio No. 1 in 2024. (150 × 150 cm)
2025 - MT.4.7. Resurrection of Ukraine
- Later, three canvases from the Racer Malevich project were sewn onto this canvas.
- I used the colors of the Ukrainian flag. I let the drips run upward to create an upward movement.
- A canvas I began during the exhibition Transformatiestudio No. 1 in 2024. (150 × 150 cm)
2025 - MT.4.3. MAGA
- A canvas I started during the exhibition Transformatiestudio No. 1 in 2024. (150 × 150 cm)
2025 – Continuation of the project Intra Muros
2025 - Traces of Transformation
During the first live setup at CCDA Lommel, I placed strips of canvas on the floor — which led me to the idea of Traces of
Transformation.
I prepared a series of 150 × 150 cm canvases with eyelets and spread them across my studio to collect traces from various activities and
materials.
Each canvas exists as a work in progress, without a fixed goal.
2024 - First live setup
During my solo exhibition Transformation Studio no. 1: Warm or Cold at CCDA Lommel, the installation was presented live
for the first time.
A working area was created within the exhibition space where, throughout the duration of the show, I melted ice targets and continued working on
canvases.
Strips of canvas were laid on the floor to capture the flow of melted paint.
Transformation: from Melting Targets canvases to bird form
During Transformation Studio no. 1: Warm or Cold, I temporarily folded five canvases into the shape of a bird.
2024 – Melting Targets no. 4
Melting Targets no. 4 further refines installation no. 3.
Mounted on wheels, this version is easily movable and allows both the height of the ice discs and the diameter of the circles to be adjusted.
The stainless-steel moulds used to freeze the ice discs were replaced with 3D-printed holders made of yellow ABS material. This makes the installation more flexible and opens new possibilities to explore the dialogue between structure, chance, and time.
2023 - Adjusting the format of the canvases
The canvases from Melting Targets no. 3 were later resized. Originally measuring 170 × 140 cm, I decided to make them
square to reinforce the visual effect of the target. The new format became 140 × 140 cm when stretched.
After each process is completed, the canvases are removed from their aluminium frames. Eyelets along the outer edge allow the works to be suspended freely.
MT.3.1 tot MT.3.8 (MT: Melting Target)
2019 _ 2020 – Melting Targets no. 3
Melting Targets no. 3 evolved from the first two versions. Instead of placing a metal stand on the canvas, I attached the ice discs to a rotating metal structure suspended above it. As the discs melt and spin, they drip and form a new, larger target on the canvas.
This installation unites several domains: it generates paintings, incorporates a technical-constructive component, and involves a physical transformation of matter — ice becomes water, and water dries into traces of paint.
The setup allows for great variation: the thickness of the paint, the tilt of the canvas, the order in which the discs melt, or the height of the targets can all be adjusted. When the installation is active during an exhibition, the painting process can be experienced live.
The meaning remains related to the earlier works — a reflection on goals and their traces — but here I also include an art-historical reference to the Target paintings of Jasper Johns.
Start 2018 – Melting Targets no. 1 and no. 2
Melting Targets no. 1 and no. 2 form the first configuration in which I experimented with acrylic paint and water as materials.
It is a performative artwork: I place a stainless-steel mould with ice discs on a canvas. As the ice melts, the coloured water drips down, evaporates, and leaves a pattern of colour behind. Depending on the mixture of pigments, the amount of paint in the ice, the ambient temperature, and the absorbency of the canvas, each work develops differentl
In the video work, the final results are presented as if part of an exhibition. In the upper left of the video, I placed a canvas on a wooden base, intending to reuse the base later for a new painting. However, during the process, the paint seeped underneath and into the base, binding both together irreversibly. What was initially meant as a temporary support thus transformed into a permanent part of the painting.
The right-hand canvas in the centre was reused in 2025 in the installation Melting Targets no. 4. The other two panels are flatscreens displaying the process.