Heal Your Wound (mixed media/installation, approx. 70 × 80 cm)
Heal Your Wound unfolds as a reduced, almost ritualistic experimental arrangement within the tension field of reordering and dissolution. Within a clearly defined area of approximately 70 × 80 cm, a condensed space emerges that can be read as a field of wound and healing—a bounded zone in which material processes, fragility, and transformation overlap.
The raw wooden pallet forms the supporting structure of the arrangement. It refers to circulation, storage, and the flow of energy, while simultaneously functioning as a stage of unstable equilibrium. At the center rests a rusted iron bowl filled with water—an open vessel that can be read as a wound: vulnerable, receptive, and marked by oxidation. Within it, origin and exposure to time and change are concentrated.
Around this center, several glass bottles are arranged, most of them filled with brine and twigs from a graduation tower (a traditional, therapeutic salt extraction structure). One of these bottles is encased in metal and occupies a special position: it appears as a condensed “source body,” a self-contained system in which processes of evaporation, sedimentation, and crystallization take place. The enclosed blackthorn and twig structures render these slow transformations visible—as traces of time, as deposits of energy, and as indicators of continuous change.
Thales of Miletus identified water as the origin of all being—as a conditio sine qua non. From this perspective, water becomes the central carrier of meaning: not as a static substance, but as a processual medium, as a bearer of memory, and as a site of both chemical and symbolic transformation. The brine specifically references local healing traditions, while its ongoing transformation over the course of the exhibition reveals the transient nature of the system.
The installation moves between two poles: the open system of the bowl and the seemingly closed system of the bottle. While the water in the bowl is directly exposed, the liquid in the bottle undergoes a slow, barely perceptible transformation. Evaporation, concentration, and crystallization inscribe themselves into the material as fine traces—nothing disappears but rather changes its state. In this, an implicit reference to the law of conservation of energy becomes tangible: energy is preserved, albeit in transformed form—as information, structure, and sediment.
At the same time, the work evokes the motif of the “Water of Life.” In the Grimm Brothers’ fairy tale of the same name, healing is not presented as immediately accessible, but as the result of attentiveness, patience, and the ability to read subtle signs. The installation rejects spectacular effects and instead relies on slow, nearly invisible processes—as a counter-model to accelerated systems and as a reference to the quiet conditions of regeneration.
In the context of contemporary entropy—understood as a measure of dispersion, loss of order, and energetic equilibration—Heal Your Wound does not formulate resistance in terms of control, but rather a practice of transformation. The wound remains open; precisely therein lies the possibility of healing: as a process of gathering, filtering, and reordering.
Thus, a contemplative field emerges in which water can be experienced as the origin, carrier, and transformer of all being—and healing not as a state, but as a continuous movement within a fragile equilibrium.
June 2026, Steffen Bartenschlag
