Material as Language

Since the 1990s, Luca Pancrazzi’s artistic research has focused on three central themes: the exploration of artistic media and their ramifications, the creative potential of error, and the combined use of techniques and materials. His practice encompasses painting and drawing, as well as photography, video, installation, performance, and editorial projects. 

His object Aperundum (2007) combines in its title “Ape”, the name of Piaggio’s iconic Italian three-wheeled vehicle, with the Latin suffix “-undum”, derived from the gerundive and suggesting an ongoing action or a process in progress. 

In this work, Pancrazzi completely transforms a three-wheeled utility vehicle by covering it with countless fragments of glass. Although the familiar vehicle remains recognizable in its overall form, it simultaneously appears alien and detached from its original function. The glass surface creates a fascinating interplay of light, reflection, and materiality that inevitably draws the viewer’s gaze. 

The work operates within a tension between attraction and disquiet. The glass lends the vehicle a precious, almost ornamental appearance, while its sharp-edged structure simultaneously evokes fragility and vulnerability. In this way, the everyday object is transformed into a sculptural presence that raises questions about value, utility, and perception. The glass not only alters the vehicle’s outward appearance but also changes the way we read and understand it. 

The artwork Okay by Via Lewandowsky refers to the so-called Voynich Manuscript, one of the most mysterious books in the world. It was discovered in the early twentieth century by the American antiquarian Wilfrid Michael Voynich in a Jesuit library near Frascati, Italy, and is now housed in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University. 

Its uniqueness lies in the contradiction between image and text: while the illustrations reveal botanical, anatomical, medical, and astronomical subjects, the accompanying script has never been deciphered. Although the manuscript’s period of origin is now known, its language and meaning remain concealed. Particularly unsettling is the fact that the writing appears familiar and readable at first glance. 

It is precisely this point that Lewandowsky addresses. He uses the distinctive characters of the Voynich Manuscript and arranges them into the word “okay” — one of the most frequently used words in the world. The result is both surprising and paradoxical: the viewer believes they understand the inscription, yet cannot actually read it. 

As an illuminated text object, Okay recalls logos and advertising signs in public spaces, while simultaneously offering a subtle commentary on understanding and misunderstanding, on legibility and deception in a world shaped by media and signs. 

Here, writing serves not merely as a vehicle for meaning but emerges as a material object in its own right. Light, form, and spatial presence become independent carriers of meaning, while readability is deliberately shifted into a realm of uncertainty. In this way, the work suggests that materiality itself can be a language—a language that does not need to be fully deciphered in order to exert its effect. 

Hans Schabus creates sculptures and site-specific interventions that often relate directly to his intellectual and physical surroundings. His studio, as well as themes such as excavation, transport, and engineering, play a particularly important role in his practice. His works frequently engage with ecological and material cycles of creation, destruction, and renewal. 

His primary interest, however, lies less in the materiality of a single medium than in the interplay between objects, space, materials, and movement. 

At the center of the photograph Europahaven, Rotterdam, 17 June 2009 is the small sailboat Forlorn, which the artist built himself and has sent on a symbolic journey through various places and landscapes over many years. 

In the image, the artist navigates the boat toward the vast container terminals of the Port of Rotterdam. The fragile appearance of the small vessel stands in striking contrast to the monumental infrastructure of global goods transport. Between an individual voyage and worldwide transportation networks, a field of tension emerges that raises questions about mobility, arrival, and belonging. 

The work communicates its themes not through narrative representation, but through the presence of the materials and objects themselves. Schabus demonstrates how things, places, and landscapes carry stories of movement, memory, and transformation within them. In this way, material becomes a language that speaks both of human experience and of the structures of a globally interconnected world.