Robert Lanz — Matter, Light, and the Agency of Transformation
Robert Lanz is a Berlin-based artist whose practice balances experimental material research and conceptual inquiry. His methodology is processual and precise: he initiates physical and chemical reactions, then withdraws deliberate control.
Ink and pigments dissolved in spirit, then heat and evaporation; oil, copper, and aluminum on paper — materials follow their own logic while paper functions as a recording surface. Early work developed under the artistic mentorship of Leiko Ikemura. From this foundation, Lanz developed his own methodology, combining serial repetition with intuition: 40 sheets in a single day, not composed but executed in rapid succession. Each work is a moment in an experimental series where concept and process converge.
With the series Tsantsa Nova (completed), the work shifts toward different materials and occult and ritualistic dimensions. The series engages with the historically and culturally charged form of the shrunken head (tsantsa) — originally a ritual object of the Shuar and related Jivaroan peoples in the Amazon region, later commodified through colonial trade, musealised, stripped of its original function.
Lanz creates no replications. Instead, he develops a recoding: original assemblages built from coconut and ritual materials that cite the historical form without reproducing its content. The work responds to colonial commerce through transparency rather than concealment—a gesture that is conceptually and politically precise.
Roberts’s artistic practice operates through distance and displacement: the concept is set, materials are released. Control lies in selection and orchestration, not composition.
Mentored by Leiko Ikemura. Based in Berlin-Neukölln.
Material Process: Solutio · Coagulatio · Calcinatio
Solutio, Coagulatio, and Calcinatio describe a cycle of dissolution, condensation, and thermal transformation. In Robert Lanz’s practice, these terms function as an operative model for material-based image production, connecting physical-chemical processes with painterly decision-making.
As a triad, Solutio – Coagulatio – Calcinatio describes an operative cycle of historical alchemy that translates precisely into contemporary material-based image production: thermal withdrawal and reduction, dissolution or dispersion within a medium, and subsequent condensation into stable form. Within the vocabulary of the alchemical opus, these terms offer a methodological framework for understanding transformation not merely as metaphor, but as a material operation.
Solutio refers to the transition of solid substances into solution, suspension, or sol states, where interfacial chemistry becomes visible and controllable. The dispersion of pigment and metal particles in polar or non-polar media enables defined fluid properties such as viscosity, wetting behaviour, capillary transport, and controlled bleeding.
Coagulatio describes precipitation, crystallisation, gel formation, and curing. From an open, fluid intermediate state, a supporting structure emerges: particulate aggregates percolate and interconnect until a spatial network is formed. In pictorial processes, this manifests as layer, crust, edge, or surface membrane — whose microstructure makes the parameters of its formation legible.
The alchemical maxim solve et coagula — dissolve and bind — becomes central as a methodological formula. It connects material control with compositional decisions drawn from neighbouring fields: sequencing and rhythm follow a musical logic; layering and cuts echo cinematic montage; joints, edges, and structural decisions borrow precision from fashion and object design.
Calcinatio refers to the controlled action of heat and dryness. Binding agents are driven out, oxidation states shift, water is removed, and the material is reduced to its stable and load-bearing components. On metal surfaces — particularly copper alloys — such transformations can be traced through characteristic corrosion and patination products, including cuprite and tenorite. These layers are not merely visual effects, but reliable markers of process parameters: temperature range, humidity, atmosphere, and time.
In Robert Lanz’s practice, Solutio, Coagulatio, and Calcinatio describe a procedural logic in which matter is opened, destabilised, reconfigured, and fixed. The resulting works are not illustrations of transformation, but records of transformation itself — surfaces in which chemical reaction, physical force, compositional decision, and temporal exposure remain materially present.