“So Many Times, I” – A4, 2024 (made with pictures from the book Collages & Assemblages, Verbeke Foundation 2017)

Each collage in this series begins within strict, self-imposed limits — a quiet ritual of reduction and transformation. One book, one rule: in this case, a publication by the Verbeke Foundation on collage. Page by page, I cut. No page is spared. The first page becomes fragments — torn or sliced at random — and with its front and back, I compose in the centre of a white page. Then the second page. And so on. The material dictates the moment. Even when a page offers nothing I like, I work with what is there.

There is no selection — only acceptance. Each day brings a new page, a new constraint, a new invitation to let go of taste, control, or intent. Within this framework, chance and serendipity are not just allowed — they are essential companions.

One must work with what one is given.

What you see is not necessarily how it was made. This, too, is part of the process. After assembling a collage, I turn the A4 slowly, letting the piece suggest its own orientation.

Over time, these images have begun to feel like solitary figures. They no longer speak of their origins. They have slipped free of context, memory, or meaning. I see them more and more as a kind of self-portrait — not in likeness, but in presence. Each one stands alone, quiet, unresolved, as if placed gently in the middle of a wide, white silence.

The German word Fremdkörper comes to mind — a foreign body, something strange and out of place.

And yet, there they are, together strong.