Catalogue Distance to Zero

Fia Cielen makes sculptures, drawings, videos and installations that come together to form a wondrous universe: one in which such opposites as life and death, art and nature, dark and light cease to exist. Cielen’s works and how she presents them are reminiscent of eighteenth-century display cabinets full of curiosities. They summon up, at one and the same time, a mixture of horror and wonder.

This dark fairy-tale world is populated by mysterious creatures who appear to be in a state of metamorphosis: a half-way stage between man and animal. Cielen is particularly interested in the mystery of transformation and the interim stages this can involve. It is not only her animal-like creatures who are in a continual stage of transition – Cielen shows that the same can be said of our entire reality.