Clay & objects / 03
METABOLIC WINE VESSELS
2025 · Clay, pigments, plant matter, metals and fragments of technology on wine bottles.
The vessels
Four material histories.
Created in 2025. The years in the names identify the original wine vintages.
Material history
Metabolic Wine Vessels begins with an industrial bottle of red wine — an object of routine pleasure and circulation. Through successive layers of clay, pigments, plant matter, metals, and fragments of technology, the bottle is reconfigured into a site of material accumulation. Embedded objects such as spices, circuits, coins, and stopped watches form a stratified skin that records gestures, decisions, and time.
The process is metabolic: each added element is absorbed into the vessel’s evolving body rather than placed upon it. The bottle becomes a system that processes cultural residue —organic, digital, economic—transforming a disposable object into a dense, self-contained relic.
Neither representation nor decoration, these vessels occupy a space between artifact and organism. They echo additive traditions of charged objects while remaining firmly situated in contemporary material culture. What emerges is a question: how does an ordinary object shift when it begins to metabolize the world around it?
The vessels stand as condensed material histories, accumulating their meaning through layers rather than symbols, offering presence instead of narrative.
Photographic documentation
Bottle, layers and surface.
Film documentation
