Murmuration, in progress in the studio.

Trees with Ivy, after Van Gogh, printed on metallic foil.

    Lost & Fauna is a kinetic ecosystem in which speculative creatures live among lost paintings. Three kinetic sculptures respond to the people around them. In Phálene, death’s-head hawkmoths circle on a travelling wave beneath a filament bulb that glows brighter as visitors come close. In Murmuration, feathers rise and fall like a flock as people pass. Murex, two spined shells from the cabinet of inter-curiosities, hangs from the ceiling and turns and tilts towards the sounds of the room. Part organism, part circuitry, the creatures are hybrids that grow out of what has been lost.

    Around them is a lost environment of paintings that disappeared — seized, stolen or burned — reproduced on shimmering metallic foil. Among them are Van Gogh’s Trees with Ivy, missing since 1942, and one of Monet’s Water Lilies, burned at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1958. A self-playing piano plays Satie’s Gymnopédie No. 1 and slowly forgets it. The more the creatures move, the faster the notes fall away, and where a note is forgotten, a painting trembles in its place.

    Visitors complete the work: their attention wakes the creatures, and without knowing it they set the pace of the forgetting. Lost & Fauna will be shown in Berlin in spring 2027.

In the studio with Phálene in progress, 2026.

Death’s-head hawkmoths for Phálene.

Murex being 3D printed.

Detail: the foil reflects the room.