For Michael Beutler, a professor of sculpture in Hamburg, Germany, an exhibition is a kind of workshop. His work isn’t necessarily made in the studio and transported to a gallery; instead, it unfolds in response to its location, in conversation with the surrounding space, and is created with the help of a large team. Using simple materials and personally developed tools that transform paper, cardboard, and textiles into sculptural elements, he considers “each project as a learning process in which participants collectively explore the possibilities of the materials. The exchange of knowledge and skills is just as important as the final outcome.”
Beutler’s current exhibition at Z33 galleries in Hasselt, Belgium, his largest in more than 10 years and a collaboration with 50 architecture and product design students, brings together new and existing works that demonstrate what can be achieved with the simplest of means.
Robert Preece: You’ve put together an impressive series of installations at Z33, with a lot of elements and an almost overwhelming number of things to look at. What do you see as the overall objectives of this show?
Michael Beutler: Richness in material, color, shapes, laborious energy, the joy of people making the work and the joy of those experiencing the results, the autonomy of making, underlining each moment of presence—the here and now—during the production and during observation, enhancing the potential of the building, and embedding all of this in a continuous narrative of former projects and exhibitions in the shape of fragments, maquettes, and movies. Self-developed and self-constructed tools play a core role in all of this. They are the manifestations of characteristic crafts that reflect the conditions of the situations for which the works were developed. They carry the traces of actions that transform materials to become sculpture, installation, and architecture.
RP: How did you become interested in working with paper? What are its strengths and weaknesses as a material?
MB: I wouldn’t say that my practice is specifically based on the use of paper, but paper contains many qualities that express my attitude in working and dealing with materials. One of its strengths is that it’s not just one thing; there is a great variation in the kinds of paper, which not only limits, but also allows for certain constructive works and methods. It is also relatively cheap in relation to surface and volume covered and therefore allows for quite a playful freedom on a large scale.
I do not relate the word “weakness” to materials in general. If a material doesn’t have the potential for a project that I have in mind, I either use a different material altogether or refine the material, so that it can serve my wishes and demands. But this always has to do with its strengths, or rather qualities.
RP: You design your own tools. Could you explain how this fits into the wider context of your work?
MB: Tools are key to humankind. Tools are at the center of craft. Craft is a way of communication, not only between the material world and humankind, but also between humans and other humans, or even other species. I often find myself in situations that demand a certain architectonic gesture, for which I create crafts, tools, and workshops that then open up a specific dialogue between the work and the space. The tools are present in the exhibition. They are a sculptural bridge between the producers and the observers. This is the case in most of the galleries at Z33. Making tools oneself also guarantees great freedom and autonomy, and it lets you reconsider how you think about and deal with materials. Nothing is given; things are always shapeable.
RP: What impression were you aiming for with the installation of tall columns in the corridor?
MB: That corridor, or internal street, has specific qualities that I wanted to embrace fully with this work. The colorful columns are quite playful sculptural bodies that really inhabit this area and visually outperform the total volume of the space. Straight away, Stiff Pants overwhelms visitors. The columns are quite fragile—they are just standing and leaning against each other. Many ripped paper pieces are scattered on the floor, remnants from the production period.
Everything needed to make this installation is still there: small hand tools to make the twist knots in the metal fences, the laminating device to attach the paper to the fence, and the pulley and bamboo sticks to help erect the pipes to become columns. The installation did not follow a certain plan that determined where things went; instead, it was just arranged as it appeared to be good, easy, unpretentious, and fitting everybody involved.
RP: How did you make your selections for the other spaces?
MB: The lower galleries present a variation on paper workshops. The tower hosts a paper ceiling that was cast on the spot from paper pulp ground in the little atrium garden in the center of the building. (This is the first time the place was used as part of an installation.) The staircase areas, specifically below the staircase, are built in the manner of basement storage compartments, which are usually filled with a lot of stuff. Here, the cage is made with a bamboo building system and is filled with a large number of small tools, material samples, and fragments of works. Above this is a room with many maquettes, both representative and working maquettes for projects. Then there is Haus Beutler—a long corridor made with a wood-frame system that contains various work samples from the last 20 years. The corridor leads into the grand upper gallery of Z33.
RP: Can you talk about the elements over the stairs and your decision-making process?
MB: This area is a bit of an archive that allows for views into the experimental process behind many of my works. There are tools that did not really work and material-probes that never really made it into a large-scale project. I knew this area would look good. The bamboo-Velcro system allowed for complete improvisation. All the shelving was built without concrete plans. Its construction was great fun for gallery staff, as well as the students, and the shelves were filled in the same way, step by step, just as it felt right to do.
RP: Which space was the most challenging to work with?
MB: I look at the Z33 installation as a whole—an organism that is so well balanced that there is no such thing as a challenging space. All the spaces are inviting, and I happily filled them all. The challenging aspect was the quite crazy quantity of things that I brought along. We moved a lot of things around many times. Luckily, the staff at Z33 is amazing and always willing to find ways to make things happen—without ever complaining.
RP: What is the significance of incorporating your old studio door into the installation?
MB: The door marks a moment in the show, as well as a transition in my artistic practice. Even though I would say that I am not really an artist who makes work in the studio, I do need such a place to experiment and think. I recently had to move my studio after 16 years. Although I have a new place, it is still becoming a studio, so I basically used Z33 as my studio in the meantime. The studio door emphasizes this moment, and it also clarifies the rather undefined architectural situation on the border between the old and new wings of Z33.
RP: How do you want viewers to experience the loom installation, with its multiple forms and open space?
MB: Take off your shoes. Spend some time on the carpets as you wish. Hasselt has a big textile history, and a lot of its wealth today is based on the production and trade of the past. Weaving is a very fundamental and universal technology for humankind. It has a long history and many faces, while the technology is as simple as can be—fibers are spun to make yarn, and the yarn is woven into a surface, for instance a sheet or a carpet.
I developed this loom specifically to make carpet rolls that fill entire spaces in regard to their volume. Here, we see the production of different workshops in Berlin, Düsseldorf, Cologne, and the carpet that was woven in Hasselt together with the loom. To me, it fitted very well into this relatively low and wide space with its dynamic ceiling pattern. From the window, one can see over the rooftop landscape of the old town of Hasselt.
“Michael Beutler” is on view at Z33 through February 22, 2026.
