Burned oak wood
250 x 130 x 30 cm
2024

With moving light compositions, the light player Fire heralds the era of living light. It reinvents the experience of light by introducing light as a dynamic emotional source. Users can click and dim through precisely composed Vibes, the first songs of light. Their light is moving, setting the room in motion at the touch of a button. Fire brings bring poetry into the room, like a candle or a fireplace.

Fire’s iconic, soft design is made of a shiny mouth-blown glass head and aluminium body. Fire offers up to 50 hours of battery life and fully charges in 2 hours. The Smart-LED battery indicates the battery status.

Fire is designed as a full aluminum body with a shiny mouth blown glass head and rubberized Sneaker Foot. Fire offers ultra-fast charging via USB-C Power Delivery (2h to max.). A Smart-LED indicates the battery status. A double click activates the 30 minute sleep timer.

Fire optimizes the biorhythm by simulating the light effect of sunset. This has a health-promoting effect on the body as it increases the production of melatonin in the evening. The latest scientific studies show that blue light in the evening increases the risk of mental illness by 30%. That’s why Fire offers, in addition to clear light, a warm light without blue light.

Produced by GRAU in Germany
Aluminum and mouth-blown glass
11,8 x  11,8 x 32,5 cm
2024

Since the beginning of human history, rituals, stories and social spaces have developed around the bonfire and persist to this day. The immersive sculpture Bonfire aims to activate feelings and changing perspectives, through light. Bonfire offers an opportunity to revive the original use and deeply rooted phenomenology of light. The work allows us to re-imagine a universal medium that illuminates our relationship with ourselves and creates deeper connections with others and the world around us.

The 2.5-meter-high Bonfire takes the shape of a large-scale pile of matches, built from raw aluminum pipes and mouth-blown glass bulbs that gently glow, flicker and emit light with lively movement and colour. A 10 minute light composition plays on the 20 light sources, transforming the vibe of the entire space. Bonfire and its spatial and social environment change collectively.

Presented at the Bergen Assembly Triennale 2022 and exhibited at FRAC Champagne-Ardenne as well as Kunsthaus Hamburg in 2023, the expressive Bonfire sculpture immerses visitors into a dynamic light composition and creates a social space of contemplation.

Aluminum and mouth-blown glass
250 x  250 x 250 cm
2022

Sound Score

A sound score composed by Danish composer Puce Mary, commissioned by Timon & Melchior Grau, accompanies the work. Depending on the context and program of the exhibition, the sound can be played throughout the entire exhibition time or just temporarely.

Exhibitions:

Acrylic on Aluminum
150 cm x 250 cm
2022

The Fire Sculptures are a series of dynamic sculptures that perform immersive light compositions. Each uses the transformational power of light to impact the relationship between human, object and space. They shape the room between things. The Fire Sculptures aim to activate the human’s capacity to feel, remember and reconnect.

According to the different Fire sculptures the lightoutputs differ in rythm, lightintensity and color spectrum. Each sculpture represents a different character: “Choose to change today confronts you with ambivalence and the acceptance of change. Kiss is intimate and is about embracing openness. Burn from both ends is so immersive that you can’t escape the light. Like falling into the sun, going all in, bathing in light. And I am a believer feels to us like sneaking into someone’s brain, like walking through a utopian landscape of lucid dreams.” (Timon & Melchior Grau)

As a trigger of the experience the Fire Sculptures become a counterpart, like friends, like wonders, like flashing neurons, like giant pixels or pulsating organs. They inhabit the space together with the viwer. They shape their experiences, but are independent from them. They are neither offending, nor ignoring you. The viewers become the center of the experience, as they are confronted with their own reflections.

Aluminum and mouth-blown glass
2021

Texts:
Conversation between DIS and Timon & Melchior Grau.

Exhibitions:

For the opening of the Bergen Triennale, Timon & Melchior Grau expanded the activation of their installation, with the performative work “Celebration of Life” performed by Hammal in form of a Youyou Ululation.

Celebration of Life is a piece about the ambiguity of life, about joy and pain, about cohesion and individuality.

A Youyou (ululation) is a long, wavering, high-pitched vocal sound that resembles a howl with a trilling character. It is produced by a high, loud voice accompanied by a rapid back and forth movement of the tongue and uvula. Chanting is practiced either alone or as part of certain singing styles at various ritual community events (e.g. weddings or funerals) to express strong feelings. Youyou is an intense expression of feeling and life. The chant is practiced in all parts of Africa, the Middle East and Central and South Asia. It is also practiced in some places in Europe, such as Cyprus, and in the diaspora community originating from these areas.

Even early humans gathered around the light of fire. Told each other stories. Celebrated rituals and practiced community. It was the charcoal from the fire that the first wall paintings were created with, in the caves of Lascaux. The flickering light of the fire set these images in motion.

Salt Sapiens translates these genealogies into a contemporary production process by making the handprints created during the powder coating of the lamp visible. In this way, a human trace leads to the lamp, which in turn is controlled by touch.

Salt Sapiens was created for the Jahresgaben of the Hamburger Kunstverein.

Edition of 20+5AP

Each edition is unique.

In Are We Human?, Beatriz Colomina and Mark Wigley conclude that everything is Design and “Design is what makes the human”. They describe the role of the human not as the inventor of objects and tools but the other way around: “Tools invent the human and more precisely, tool and human produce each other”. This implies that humans are inseparable from the artifacts they produce.

But it is not the design itself which is the artifact, Colomina and Wigley continue, it is rather the human body and brain which can be seen as the designed artifacts and what makes the human human is the radicality of this mutual exchange. So when thinking about what makes us human, we have to abandon the image of the body as a closed system.

There is no outside to the world of design. The distinction between design and nature is obsolete. Even the earth itself has been completely encrusted by design as a geological layer. Everything is Design, and Design is what makes the human.

Polymer Ceramics and lacquer
280 x  160 x 60 cm
2020

For the duration of the performance Time is only movement, two people are walking through the exhibition space without preplanned choreography. The continuous gesture and shared presence in the room creates a dynamic relationship between viewer and performer, between subjects and objects. The performers are neither actively communicating with the audience, nor are they ignoring their presence. They are moving forward.

Exhibitions:

Super, Athens, 2016

Parrot is like a good friend. The smart battery-powered lamp is designed to adapt to different contexts and offers up to 100 hours of portable light.

Inspired by Timon and Melchior Graus performance Time is only movement, in Athens and the work of Alberto Giacometti, Parrot takes the shape of a human figure. Its round head lays on a long body with large feed. With its height-adjustable body and flexible lamp head, it offers all-round flexibility and dynamism.

Easily recharge the lamp by placing it on the charging stone. With the battery indicator on the touch dimmer, you can always keep an eye on the running time. Use Parrot in the living room, by the bed, at work or as a sculptural lighting object in the room.

Exhibitions:

Julia Stoschek Foundation Berlin, Eventide

Design Awards:

German Design Award

Wallpaper* Design Award

iF Gold Award

Produced by GRAU in Germany
Aluminum
15 x  89-140 x 28 cm
2024

The Messenger series enacts a new kind of exchange, asking what a message becomes when it is sent and seen on a screen. Evolved from an exploratory practice over iPhone, the series of word paintings take abrupt text excerpts and frame them into tangible objects. The linguistic artefacts forge a new kind of corporeality — one from which the speakers themselves have withdrawn.

With their reflective glass surfaces, these impersonal messengers summon us into a relationship, but on uncertain ground. Holding up passivity against possibility, the works interrogate the inescapable bind of digital communication, where limitless scope comes with meticulous surveillance, and each messenger and message is mined for data. As the works reflect on the traditions of text and portraiture to ask how we look at icons, signs, and objects, so too must the viewer scrutinize their own body — are they unique and expressive subject, or only a target group?

Edition: 6+2AP

Figurative elements of the human face are placed within an undefined space. The Inner paintings present a fragmented and unpersonalized form of portraits.

Acrylic and graphite on canvas
90 x 120 cm
2014-2015

Acrylic and graphite on canvas
210 x 130 cm
2015

Rembrandt is a digital reconstruction and remix of the painting „Self Portrait with Halsberge“ (ca. 1626) by the Dutch painter Rembrandt van Rijn. In the original painting, the young painter expresses his youthful self-confidence and his social aspirations, by presenting himself for the first time in a noble attire.

The reproduction photography was provided by the Germanisches Nationalmuseum Nürnberg, which holds the original painting. In collaboration with the retouch agency RGBerlin the image was digitally reconstructed, using retouching processes common in contemporary media advertisement. Signs of aging on the canvas, were meticulously removed to restore the painting’s original vibrancy. This involved an intricate process of digital cleaning and preservation. Parts of the hair and dress were changed, blending elements of contemporary style with the classical portrait. Furthermore, the entire image was color graded to unify the alterations and to enhance the visual impact of the painting.

The final digital artwork is produced in a larger format than the original work, printed on alu-dibond and framed in a waxed wooden frame. The reflective glass functions as a mirror, placing the viewer into the image.

Rembrandt is produced an edition of 100.
2018