At the forthcoming Luxembourg Art Week, sculpture emerges not simply as a medium of three-dimensional form, but as a field of transformation—one in which familiar objects, materials and physical phenomena are displaced from their conventional meanings and reimagined. Across the work of several international artists presented by participating galleries, sculpture becomes a way of recontextualizing reality, turning everyday objects into repositories of memory, identity and cultural meaning, while exploring the shifting relationship between the natural and the constructed, the physical and the imaginary.
by Emanuela Mazzonis
At La Compagnie des Beaux-Arts (Luxembourg, Paris), the work of Portuguese artist Joana Vasconcelos exemplifies this capacity for transformation. Her large-scale sculptures bring every day and domestic objects—embroidery, ceramics, textiles, kitchen utensils and household appliances—into unexpected configurations, transforming them into exuberant and spectacular works. Her practice moves between tradition and modernity, the intimate and the monumental, the private and the public. Vasconcelos questions the boundaries between high and popular culture, while addressing questions of identity, gender, power and consumer society.
A different form of cultural recontextualization characterizes the work of Tyrrell Winston (Stems Gallery, Brussels). His sculptural assemblages are constructed from found basketballs, worn nets and other objects collected from the streets and basketball courts of New York. Objects marked by use and abandonment are transformed into carefully composed installations in which their material histories remain visible. His practice is focused on investigating the dialogue between decay and renewal, loss and regeneration, abandonment and resilience.
The transformation of human experience into sculptural form is central to Itamar Gilboa (MOB-ART studio, Luxembourg). Working across sculpture, installation and data-based practices, the Israeli-Dutch artist combines a scientific and systematic methodology with broader questions concerning society and human behavior. In Food Chain Project, he transforms his daily habits into a reflection on global food systems, sustainability and the relationship between individual choices and collective responsibility.
The possibility of constructing alternative environments is taken further by Simon Laveuve (Loo & Lou Gallery, Paris), whose meticulously built architectural models transform discarded materials into imagined spaces of habitation. Working at miniature scale, he constructs fragile, post-industrial microcosms that evoke abandoned sites, improvised shelters and utopian architectures. His sculptures inhabit an ambiguous territory between desolation and poetry, destruction and reconstruction, suggesting new forms of shelter and survival.
The relationship between the human-made environment and the natural world is explored through material transformation in the work of Guillaume Castel (Galerie Ariane C-Y, Paris). Drawing on the structures and rhythms of nature, Castel translates organic forms into sculptures made from wood, steel and brass. Curved, polished surfaces interact with light, producing works that appear simultaneously natural and constructed.
A similarly transformative approach to the everyday can be found in the work of German artist Beate Höing (Galerie Biesenbach, Cologne). Through assemblage and displacement, she takes familiar materials and objects out of their functional context and gives them new, often unexpected identities. Their original purpose becomes secondary as new visual and associative relationships emerge. Her sculptures are stimulating memory and imagination, opening up alternative ways of reading the familiar.
In the work of Jacinto Moros (Victor Lope Arte Contemporaneo, Barcelona), transformation takes place through the physical language of line and movement. Working with wood, metal, resin and paper, he creates sinuous, curvilinear structures that appear to move through space or remain suspended within it. His sculptures underline the boundary between organic movement and geometric abstraction, attempting to give permanent form to forces that are inherently ephemeral.
The laws governing physical movement and gravity become the subject of Stephan Siebers (aquilaluna galerie, Liège). Working primarily with steel and other industrial materials, the German artist employs elementary geometric forms—cubes, cuboids and spheres—to construct apparently precarious configurations. Mass, volume, balance and stability are placed under perceptual pressure, producing sculptures in which physical rules become almost optical illusions.
The boundaries between physical presence and immaterial experience are further explored by David Scognamiglio (Galerie PJ, Metz). Light becomes his principal medium, allowing him to investigate the relationship between space, movement and perception. His installations reveal phenomena that might otherwise remain invisible, transforming the surrounding environment through subtle interventions of light, shadow and reflection. The viewer is invited to slow down and reconsider the relationship between presence and absence, the visible and the invisible.
Finally, Arina Essipowitsch (Galerie de l’Est – Darya Brient, Compiègne) extends the idea of sculpture beyond traditional material objects by transforming photography into a physical and spatial experience. Her practice pushes the photographic image beyond its conventional role as a two-dimensional representation: photographs are folded, cut, reconstructed and reconfigured, becoming sculptural objects that can occupy and transform space. The artist questions the stability of the photographic image and its relationship to memory, perception and the body. Photography becomes something to be experienced physically rather than simply observed, establishing a dialogue between image, sculpture, performance and spatial perception. Across these practices, sculpture reveals itself as a medium in constant expansion, that does not simply occupy space—it redefines our relationship to it. By transforming what is familiar, these artists encourage us to look again at the objects, materials and environments that surround us, revealing within them histories, memories and possibilities that might otherwise remain unseen.
