Stefan Damman

Final Work

This installation plays with the tension between creation and destruction. The paintings—made with edible pigment on wafer paper—have a sacred aura, not because of religion, but because of their formal monumentality and ritual significance. They evoke something to be celebrated or respected.

Yet, their fate is the opposite: they are eaten. At the centre is a table, a place of gathering, of sharing—but also of consumption. In the plate: an opening that leads to a screen. There, you see the creator tearing off the artwork, breaking it into pieces, and eating it. The actions are simultaneously tender and destructive. The sublime is absorbed into the everyday; the image is absorbed into the body.

The installation raises questions about how we interact with what we create. Art, ideas, symbols: we construct them, sometimes briefly venerate them, only to tear them down again. Is this destruction or enrichment? Is it respect or appropriation?

This cycle—making, admiring, consuming—is fundamentally human. Perhaps we can only truly connect with something by letting it go, eating it, letting it disappear, or perhaps even destroying it.

General Personal Work

Art is more than an expression; it is a form of reflection and renewal. A means of reflecting on what we might overlook and be fueled by coincidences... or not.

A quote closely related to Stefan Damman's work:

“If you feel safe in the area you’re working in, you’re not working in the right area. Always go a little further into the water than you feel you’re capable of being in. Go a little out of your depth. And when you don’t feel that your feet are quite touching the bottom, you’re just about in the right place to do something exciting.” - David Bowie

Stefan Damman’s work consists of a series of fascinations. Inspired by a moment in which a realisation occurs. A fragment of a conversation. A simple brainwave. A combination of coincidences or daydreaming on a thought.

This series of fragments often ends as abruptly as they arise, making way for new impressions.