Location: Bonnefantenstraat 1, 3500 Hasselt
Chlorophyll usually signals life: the green pigment that allows plants to transform light into energy. But what remains when that energy source is deliberately removed? Does life unravel entirely, or does something else take shape in its absence? These questions lie at the core of Luca Vanello’s practice. For his first solo exhibition at Z33, he presents a poetic environment where delicate structures linger somewhere between animation and suspension.
Vanello’s work often focuses on plants whose natural capacity for photosynthesis has been intentionally interrupted. Once this fundamental life‑giving mechanism is disabled, the plants shed their green hues and lose their momentum to grow. What emerges are ghostlike, translucent remnants — organisms caught in a liminal state, beyond life yet not fully erased. By intertwining this fragile organic material with technologies drawn from biomedical research, including therapeutic plant systems and responsive 3D‑printed components, Vanello creates encounters between the natural and the engineered.
Unlike most museum settings, where temperature and humidity are meticulously stabilized, Vanello embraces these shifting conditions as sculptural forces. At Z33, he constructs a micro‑environment that prompts an algae‑based hydrogel to contract, stretch, and twist. Each subtle adjustment leaves visible traces on the material, mapping the delicate entanglement between form and atmosphere.
Curator: Kevin Gallagher
Developed as part of ongoing doctoral research supported by PXL‑MAD School of Arts, Hasselt, and Maastricht University.
With material support from IFF Food Ingredients, Denmark.
Research into responsive biopolymers was carried out in collaboration with Floris van Warmerdam, Tijn Nietsch, and Fleur Hoenderboom at Eindhoven University of Technology.
