Sfincterman
‘Sfincterman’ is a sculpture that resists being pinned down. It grows, sheds, and infects.
What began as a reflection on the act of spewing out words and opinions evolved into a participatory work that invites reflection, doubt, and collective transformation.
In every phase, the central tension remains intact: the struggle between what stays inside and what is pushed outward — between control and release, between thinking and spewing.
Transformations
Start 2020 - Sfincterman No.0
Sfincterman is a contemporary superhero. Overwhelmed by an excess of superficial and one-sidedly consumed information, his body has developed mutations of multiple sphincters. These mutations have devoured large parts of his tissue, turning his body into an improbable emptiness.
Sfincterman possesses the supernatural power to use his sphincters to bury everything that stands in his way beneath a mass of vulgarisation, unempathetic chatter, ill-considered criticism, and alternative facts. Standing on a vermilion-coloured barrel, he releases all restraint and receives applause.
The sludge is highly contagious: without doubt or reflection, the listener absorbs his power. Thus, a clone of Sfincterman is conceived and continues to spread among humankind.
The hardened bits of muck scattered around the pedestal can be hung by visitors onto the ‘sphincter rings’. In doing so, the sculpture constantly changes shape.
Trivia: a sphincter is a circular muscle that closes off a hollow organ. Some can be consciously controlled; others function involuntarily.
On the right, a first video work can be seen — bringing the world of Sfincterman into motion. (with sound)
2024 – Video Sfincterman in collaboration with C-TAKT
In 2023, C-TAKT brought together director Karel Tuytschaever and visual artist Niko Hendrickx to create a video work centered on Sfincterman nr.0.
The video presents a choreography inspired by the sculpture, an intense spoken recording, a scrolling text banner, and the artist’s hand attaching discharge pieces
to the sculpture — a ritual of contagion and meaning-making.
Credits
Concept, direction & edit: Karel Tuytschaever
Dancer: Louka Gailliez
Director of photography: Lotar Legon
Gaffer & focus puller: Henry Commerman
Sound recording & mix: Bruce Stevens
Voice edit: VICE
Produced by C-TAKT
2024 – Sfincterman No.0.0
In this reworking, the pedestal — once filled to the brim with Sfincterman’s discharge — was emptied. The void now separates the unrestrained from the restrained: at the top, thoughts are spewed out without reflection, while the pedestal embodies the act of holding back, the moment before words have taken shape.
Next to the sculpture stands a small container filled with 3D-printed spheres. Around each sphere is a ribbon on which visitors can write words or sentences. The spheres symbolize words as weapons: potentially charged, but only effective once released.
The ribbons can be tied to an empty discharge piece and then attached to the sculpture — at the top if the words should or must be spoken, at the bottom if they are better left unsaid. Other visitors may rearrange the ribbons at will. In this way, the sculpture remains in a state of continuous reordering.
Videos above:
The ribbons slowly unwind, causing a gradual, breathing transformation — an image that continually rewrites itself.
To accompany this process, an instructional video was created as an integral part of the installation.
2024 – Virus Words
During Transformation Studio No. 1: Warm or Cold at CC De Adelberg, the ribbons from Sfincterman were given a new context.
The ribbons, carriers of words, were gathered on a wall where they seemed to spread and multiply like viruses. Words and sentences became a collective infection: language without an owner, meaning without origin.
Three Google drawings and the 3D animation Hate Radio extended this motif of viral growth. Together they formed a temporary constellation in which language, image, and digital noise infected one another to become a single living organism.
2024 – Sfincterman with Colour Tentacles
During Transformatiestudio nr. 1: warm of koud at CC De Adelberg, Sfincterman evolved into an open mind that spoke in colour.
The written ribbons were replaced by transparent water hoses filled with coloured liquid. What once consisted of language — fleeting, charged, personal — became fluid, anonymous, and sensory.
The sculpture thus transformed from an empty figure filled with words and phrases into a body with coloured tentacles stretching around the sculpture, searching for connection. Where words once formed the contact with the outside world, colour and material now take over that role. Communication remains, but becomes physical, direct, and wordless.