Robert Lanz — Matter, Light, and the Agency of Transformation
Robert Lanz works from a studio in Berlin, in painting, sculpture, and material-based series. He trained as a Meisterschüler at the Berlin University of the Arts under Leiko Ikemura.
The material usually comes first and does most of the arguing. In paintings such as Untitled (2018, oil, tar, ink, aluminium, copper, shellac on wood), the copper is left exposed to the air: it oxidises over months, forms cuprite and tenorite, and shifts colour on its own schedule rather than being painted to a fixed state. Lanz sets the conditions — which metals touch which binders, how much humidity, how long a layer is left before the next one goes on — and then waits. What hangs on the wall afterward is a record of that waiting, not an illustration of it.
The same method scales up into the object-based series. DIS/PERSION destroys a finished work on paper in a document shredder and distributes the fragments across 82 numbered glass vials, each linked by QR code to a digital record of the original. Tsantsa Nova rebuilds the historical shrunken head from coconut, pigment, and resin, using four different material combinations to mark four distinct positions — possession, pact, reflection, voice. In both cases, the finished piece depends on one earlier, irreversible act: a shredding, in one; a sealing, in the other.
What connects the paintings and the object series is this refusal to correct course afterward. Lanz commits to a material and a process, then accepts the outcome the process produces — including outcomes he didn’t choose. The decisive moment isn’t the last brushstroke or the final varnish; it’s the moment the copper is exposed, the paper goes into the shredder, or the coconut is sealed shut. Everything visible afterward is consequence, not composition.
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.