Sculptures

While making the large yellow mold for the project Saint Sebastian with Birds No. 3, I filmed a great tit that kept flying into the window of my studio. Did it see an intruder in the reflection, a mate, or was it—like Narcissus—deceptively in love with its own mirror image?

The Ornithologist presents a birdcage containing a pitch-black box. Perches and feeding trays are attached upside down on the outside. On top of the cage lies a mirror, upon which rests an object that is half binoculars, half VR headset.

To experience the work, the viewer must pick up the “VR binoculars” and look through them. Inside, the video of the great tit appears, shown in a 360-degree perspective. The viewer has to move their own body to observe the bird. To bystanders, this movement resembles that of an ornithologist watching birds in the wild.

The VR headset functions here as a contemporary cage: an optical device that both opens and confines. It grants access to a new reality while simultaneously trapping the viewer within a fixed point of view.

The work raises questions about seeing and being seen. Are we the ornithologist, caught in a black box of perception and perspective? Or are we the bird, crashing against the boundaries of our own reality?

I introduce a Greek element that represents durability and order: the classical column. Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian motifs form the foundation, complemented by subtle references to ancient Greek culture. Each sculpture becomes a conversation between myth and architecture, between transformation and structure.

The series consists of seven small sculptures, designed in a 3D program and then 3D-printed. Executed in off-white and placed on blue pedestals, they subtly refer to the colors of the Greek flag.

Each piece, approximately 25 cm high, alludes to a character from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, in which humans transform into other forms: Actaeon into a stag, Arachne into a spider, Byblis into a spring, Cadmus into a serpent, Cycnus into a swan, Erysichthon devours himself, and Ocyrhoë becomes a horse.

The title refers to the pioneering era, when people first realized that flight was truly possible. The sense of boundless progress and freedom gave humanity an almost religious faith in its own abilities.

Today, the meaning has shifted. Since the attacks on the World Trade Center in 2001 and, more recently, the bombing at Brussels Airport in Zaventem, the airplane is no longer solely a symbol of hope. It has acquired a darker, more ominous connotation, associated with religious and political terrorism.

The work Faithful Airplanes presents an aircraft as a cruciform shape — a symbol that refers simultaneously to religion and to the broader notion of “belief in something.” The form also evokes a human figure. The stripes symbolize demarcation — the rules, procedures, and patterns that define aviation. The airplane tilts forward, as if in a fall, yet that fall is caught by the yellow-and-white beam, as though hope itself lingers at the edge of collapse.

Materials: Metal, wood, polyester

Dimensions: 100x120x180

We try to distract it from its course: medical science devises strategies to delay it, outsmart it, to put it temporarily out of play. Death is deceived, trapped, lured into ambush.

In Death Trap No. 1, Death literally walks into a trap and becomes entangled in a net. In Death Trap No. 2, it is deceived once again: following a corridor toward a door, only to find no room behind it — just an abyss into which it disappears.

Both works, executed at half scale, build upon Death on a Trailer (2000), a sheet-steel sculpture in which Death had already been momentarily brought to a standstill.

Materials: Polyurethane foam, polyester, fiberglass, wood, metal, rope

A nude woman in an elevator was filmed with the door left open, so that her body gradually appears from top to bottom. The projection is cast onto a fragment of a staircase made of polyurethane foam and polyester. From a certain angle, the body does not simply descend — it seems to flow down the steps, as if it were liquid light taking shape.

Here, movement is no longer suggested through successive still frames but arises directly from projection in space. Motion itself becomes matter — a brief embodiment of light and time.

Alongside the three-dimensional installation, a painted version was created, extending the same dialogue between body, space, and motion onto the surface of the canvas.

A king determined to hold on to his power at all costs, seated upon his throne. The body has been stripped of its muscles; only the organs remain, shown schematically. Around his crown, pistols orbit. The throne contains a staircase leading inward, from which a red carpet flows outward, circling the sculpture.

In 2018, the work received a grey base coat as an intermediate stage, awaiting further transformations. Because it stands outdoors, weather and wind have a direct impact on the material.

Materials: welded sheet steel (1.5 mm), wood, vinyl

Dimensions: 300 × 300 × 260 cm (overall installation)