Transformation of Matter
This section highlights both the strength and the fragility of matter. In sculptures, paintings, and digital experiments, the reactions of materials to pressure, heat, or deformation become visible. Whether it concerns metal, paint, plastic, or organic matter: every tension, fracture, or distortion reveals something of the material’s own character and how it can be reshaped into art.
Project Transformations
Developments and First Forms
2021 - Smoked Magritte
Smoked Magritte combines a photograph, a 3D animation, and a fictional menu text into a playfully surreal whole, in which Magritte’s iconic pipe literally smokes itself and is served as a culinary dish — a humorous interplay between language, image, and taste.
On this plate we present you with wafer-thin slices of our house-smoked Magritte, served with delicate dollops of wasabi mayonnaise.
To accompany it, we selected a refined Chardonnay, fruity with a light touch of oak — the perfect pairing.
To complete the dish, you will also receive an image of René Magritte’s original pipe, which we proudly serve to you through our sublime smoking process.
Expect a taste sensation unlike anything you have ever experienced.
Bon appétit!
The artwork Smoked Magritte consists of a photograph and a 3D animation in which the pipe from René Magritte’s famous painting is clearly recognizable. Just as in Magritte’s painting, this work plays with language and meaning, giving the whole a surreal undertone.
The title playfully refers to smoked fish — more specifically turbot — raising the question of whether Magritte himself might be a kind of fish. This play on sound makes the title ambiguous and humorous.
In the video, the pipe envelops itself in smoke. Just as fish dries out and develops its distinctive flavor during the smoking process, the pipe too transforms: from smooth and shiny to shriveled and smoked. In the end, it is presented like a carpaccio on a plate, with the interior taking on a fish-like texture.
2020 – Resistance of a Skytube
Resistance of a Skytube is a 3D animation featuring a fabric tube — a so-called skytube — inflated by a powerful fan.
Normally, such a tube moves wildly, constantly changing its shape. In this work, I show the opposite: the movement of the skytube is slowed down, transforming it into a slowly shifting sculpture.
In the background, flags flap violently in the wind, while the skytube in the foreground moves slowly and solemnly. This contrast creates the impression that the tube resists — both the stormy wind around it and the air that animates it from within.
2019 - Rocky’s Transformation
Rocky’s Transformation is a 3D animation in which a stone slowly changes shape during its journey among other rocks, serving as a metaphor for the human being shaped by time and experience.
2019 - To Be the Other
To Be the Other is a short 3D animation in which a cube and a torus vainly attempt to take on each other’s form and color, turning their failed transformation into a poetic image of the desire to become the other.
In this short 3D animation, a cube and a torus take turns attempting to adopt the other’s shape and color. The result looks forced: the deformations occur too abruptly, the polygons, lines, and points visibly slip out of alignment.
Precisely this makes it compelling. What might technically appear to be a “failed” animation nevertheless works as an artwork. The clumsy attempt of both forms to imitate each other reveals the difficulty of wanting to be the other.
2019 – The Infected David
In this long 3D animation (35’), Michelangelo’s famous David is playfully yet unsettlingly afflicted by a skin disease that slowly spreads until it covers the entire statue.
It is an affliction defined by the pathology of ever-changing matter: the skin transforms from leather to chrome, and continuously into other materials.
Each time, a new infection appears, as if the sculpture were trapped in an endless cycle of contamination.
2019 - Strange Dog at the Dog Show
Strange Dog at the Dog Show is a video work in which a wire sculpture of a dog, covered in dough, slowly expands, becoming a grotesque parody of the perfect show animal.
Strange Dog at the Dog Show consists of a stainless steel wire structure covered with a pinkish dough mixture. The dough — made from yeast, flour, and water — began to rise, causing the volume to expand and making the dog appear increasingly plump and fat.
The work was placed in a small oven to keep the temperature around 37°C, ideal for the rising process. This was filmed from the outside. Later, the footage was edited into a video work, combined with images of ‘perfect’ dogs at a dog show. The contrast becomes clear: the wire-dog changes in a strange, almost grotesque way from thin to fat, and thus does not fit the strict ideal of the show.
2018 – The Paver
From the terrace of the artist’s home, a single paving stone comes loose. The small block, normally an unnoticed part of a repetitive pattern, begins to transform.
As it moves across the terrace, it continues to follow the overall direction of the pattern. Yet its shape keeps changing: the paver grows into a block, then becomes a slab, then a pillar. From small to large, from component to independent form.
The animation is rendered in black and white. The terrace’s strict order remains visible, but the moving paver subtly disrupts that order, as if testing its own possibilities.
Originally conceived as a test for future projects involving 3D animations projected in public space, the work already reveals an intriguing paradox: what is solid and modest can stretch to monumental proportions without ever fully detaching from its origin.
The paver thus becomes a sign of both fidelity and transformation – a small element taking on grand forms while remaining connected to the rhythm from which it emerged.
2018 – Melting Compositions
Using a silicone mould, I create small square ice blocks (5 × 5 × 3.5 cm) coloured with acrylic paint. I place one or several blocks on the canvas, wait, observe what happens, and let the paint do its work.
This process is repeated when necessary to achieve the most convincing composition.
At times, I used additional elements to influence the process. On the canvas, I noted how many blocks I used and which actions I performed. The colours are bright and precise, while the canvas itself remains white — lighter than the photographs suggest.
2025: For the paintings still in my possession, the stretcher bars have been removed. Eyelets have been added around the edges of the canvas.
2017 - Perpetrator–Victim Exchange
Perpetrator and Victim Rotation is a 3D animation in which the victim, soldier, and commander continuously shift in posture and power until the roles of perpetrator and victim become indistinguishable.
2017 – Iron Sketch
From a pedestal protrudes a fragment of an I-beam. Slowly, it begins to extend, as if growing.
During this gradual movement, the profile draws an abstract shape in space – a sketch unfolding into a larger sculpture.
For the animation, a space in the artist’s studio was chosen. The digital artwork was placed within it, creating the impression that the sculpture is growing on site. In the montage, I move around the piece, as if observing the transformation step by step.
2016 - Carried by the Wind
This work was created under the impression of the Panorama documentary Meanwhile in Saudi Arabia (Canvas), which exposed the large-scale violation of human rights.
Burqas are omnipresent in the streets — an image that, from a Western perspective, feels both alienating and oppressive.
The 3D animation shows a woman in a burqa. She stands motionless, while only the fabric of the garment moves gently with the waves of the wind.
The title refers to Le vent nous portera by Noir Désir. The opening lines read:
“I’m not afraid of the road, one should look,
you must listen to the twists within your deepest being,
and all will be well, the wind will carry us.”
The work is deliberately kept silent to create a sense of serene stillness. It is best presented on a vertical screen or in a darkened projection space.
2008 – Liquid Forms Through Space
This work is the first video piece in which I experiment with the materiality of form. It shows a projection of liquid polyester moving and swirling through space.
The mass slowly transforms from liquid to solid, before mysteriously shooting off into the distant depth of space.
The installation onto which the projection is cast is built three-dimensionally from an aluminium construction system, consisting of nine separate panels positioned independently and at varying depths. This creates a pronounced spatial effect and gives the movement additional depth.
The shapes originate from the project Choose and Change.