This interview was conducted by Livia Klein.
You’re showing It Happened Tomorrow as part of Capsules at Luxembourg Art Week. Can you tell me a bit about what visitors will encounter?
A theatrical experience, a passage into another dimension where the viewer becomes the smallest entity of the scene. The installation invites movement and shifting perspectives.
What sparked the initial vision for this work?
When I started working on the open call, I knew I wanted to create an immersive environment that could bridge my “mushroom” period with the more recent “surrealist” paintings. I was sitting at my desk, looking at the lithograph Conjunction of Opposites—those forest lines that could almost escape the image and enter reality, you know, such as when a movie blends animation and real life, like in Fantasia, when the animation suddenly takes over the stage. That was the spark. From there, the project grew organically; collecting discarded window frames from a nearby construction site to build a maquette, picking up pieces of wood during my runs in the Bois de la Cambre (before realizing it wasn’t exactly allowed), and reconnecting with Guillaume d’Outremont from GDO Project, who works with wood from his own forest. I also remembered Jérôme from Opifex—a print shop on rue du Bailli, with an almost magical scanner that allowed me to play with scale without losing detail. The mushroom sculptures were already in the studio, waiting. Conversations with close friends helped me sort things out; maybe covering the floor with ‘blue sand’ will be for another time.
The Capsules format, with its two vitrines, is quite particular. What was your first impression when you started thinking about showing your work in that kind of space?
At first, it seemed restrictive—the two windows felt too small to hold the project. But a seed was planted. After reflection, I decided to reimagine the piece entirely. Mushrooms, to me, embody adaptability and transformation, so I started to envision the vitrine as a kind of kaleidoscopic theatre. I like that you can’t grasp it all at once—you must walk around, let your perception unfold.
And what did you want this vitrine, so open to the street, to communicate to passersby?
The vitrine also reflects my interest in how art shown in public space can reintroduce contemplation in a distracted world—offering a pause, a moment of visual breathing. During the process, I discovered that the space once hosted Pharmacie du Pélican. The pelican, in alchemical tradition, represents self-sacrifice and renewal—an echo of my wish to reconnect ancestral and contemporary forms of healing, to merge intuition and science. A book followed me through the making—Braiding Sweetgrass, which speaks of Indigenous wisdom, scientific knowledge, and the teachings of plants.
And how did the idea of using mushrooms and branches come about?
To create a kind of forest, a vertical and horizontal writing, like a musical composition. The handmade mushrooms extend the painted image into space, while the fallen branches, gathered with the help of Guillaume d’Outremont, ground the composition. Renaud assisted with transport, and the team at Luxembourg Art Week supported the mounting and logistics. I wanted to merge the imaginary and the organic, to let these different realities resonate together—a “conjunction of opposites”. The mushrooms carry a certain energy of growth and imagination; the branches, stripped and eaten by insects, tell another story—of decay, persistence, and renewal. They come from a dead tree, yet they still generate life, movement, and reflection.
When you use these natural forms, do you think of them more as materials or as symbols?
Symbols—of adaptation, transformation, and creative resilience rooted in the natural world. The branches evoke the tangible forest, and together with the mushroom, the invisible network that connects everything. Integrating them was a way to translate cycles of matter into cycles of meaning. I also like that if you watch closely, the branches also carry lichen and small mushrooms, adding further layers of life and detail to the composition.
It seems like your works balance a state between growth and decay. What fascinates you about this in-between moment of transformation?
I have to close my eyes to answer this, and what I feel is movement. This in-between state is like breathing—being alive and able to transform. It is in action, not static, not fixed.
Do you think materials have their own agency or memory?
Yes, definitely. The lithograph from the stone carried its own energy. That’s why it was important to add new layers of paint after it was scanned and printed onto the banner. It wasn’t planned at first, but I couldn’t let it go without marking its transformation, becoming a stretched 9-meter banner. Places also contain vibrations, memories, even ghosts—traces that shape the work as much as the materials themselves.
The title It Happened Tomorrow is beautiful. What does it mean to you?
It’s about the fluidity of time—the past, present, and future constantly shaping one another. A reminder that each gesture, however small, has impact; that tomorrow begins with what we do today.
Time seems to play such a central role in your work. How do you think about it conceptually?
I’m not even sure time exists in a linear way.
And how does that idea translate visually in It Happened Tomorrow?
In the installation, different materials embody different temporalities—the painted banner (water), the mushroom sculptures (air and fire, through their metal and foam), the branches (earth). Each carries its own rhythm, yet together they coexist harmoniously, like the “three sisters” crops in Braiding Sweetgrass. Fragments from various moments resurface and reconnect: the banner, adapted from a 2024 lithography; the mushrooms, created between 2021 and 2024—somehow reawakened after a period of dormancy. Time, here, is cyclical and porous, a weaving of gestures, memories, and transformations.
Would you say art can function as a contemporary form of ritual or gratitude toward the natural world?
Yes. I think that has also been one of its purposes, in many cases, though it has never been its only aim. I don’t know enough to claim it as a finality; to do so would be to attempt a rewriting of all of art history. But it makes me think of Richard Long, whose walking and arrangements in the landscape felt like acts of devotion to the earth. Then I think of Louise Bourgeois’ spiders, which connect more to motherhood, protection, another way the human and natural intertwine. I also think of Rothko, imagining that he was deeply connected to the mythological, to what nature contains in itself, hidden spirits. Slowly, little by little, he moved toward abstraction to reflect the waves of breathing, of being alive. That’s how I see his painting. Same with Van Gogh, whose works always seem animated. I tend to jump here and there when I speak, but that’s part of how ideas connect for me.
When you return to earlier motifs, such as the mushrooms, do they transform with you, or do you feel they retain something of their original moment?
Both. Always the same, and never the same. I know it sounds strange, but I feel that the “faces” of my mushrooms have evolved almost like characters in a comic. Each one has its own personality, and over time, they develop expressions and gestures that change with me and the context. The mushrooms carry traces of their first creation, but they also change as I change, as they are placed in new contexts and combined with new materials. Each return to a motif feels like encountering an old friend who has grown and changed yet remains recognizable.
Your paintings often seem to extend into space. How does painting merge with sculpture in this installation?
I’ve always perceived my sculptural work as paintings that have stepped into the third dimension. They’re born from the same gesture, the same visual language.
You return often to natural motifs. What keeps drawing you back to them?
It’s part of my roots—facing the forest daily and growing up with parents who were former biologists and vets before becoming entrepreneurs. Nature was/is always present. It teaches observation, patience, and resilience. It’s also where I find balance.
Do you see your work as an attempt to reconcile the human and the non-human?
Yes. It acknowledges that we are one, revealing the subtle networks that connect humans and nature through form, material, and gesture.
Your works seem to balance dream and reality. Where do you position yourself between those two worlds?
Perhaps as a translator between them. I navigate both—one nourishes the other. This balance keeps evolving through practice, yoga, time in nature, and the people close to me.
Does showing this piece in Luxembourg carry a special resonance for you?
Yes, profoundly. It’s my home, my roots. Presenting this work here feels like a return—the mushrooms taking space in familiar soil. Valerius supported my early mushroom paintings, and I’m glad they are part of this journey again, now entering Luxembourg Art Week through the Capsule program.
And finally, what would you like people to take with them when they stop in front of your vitrine?
Joy, yes, but also a reminder that even small actions ripple through time, shaping the world in ways we often overlook.
