HASSELT.- Michael Beutler (°1976, DE) presents his first major solo exhibition in Belgium at Z33. Over the past few weeks, he exchanged his Berlin studio for the art house in Hasselt, where his work came to life. Large quantities of paper, cardboard, and textiles found their way into the building and were transformed using self-made tools into building blocks for expansive installations: from colorful columns and paper waffles to curls, loops, and a flowing weaving studio.
Z33 currently feels like one big studio, where the joy of making is palpable throughout. Together with a team of fifty participants – student workers, guides, architecture students (UHasselt), and product design students (LUCA School of Arts, campus C-mine) – Beutler explores the artistic potential of simple materials. He demonstrates greatness through simplicity and collaboration, showing how imagination and teamwork can achieve something truly impressive with limited means.
A building as delicate as paper
The art and craft of construction are key sources of inspiration for Beutler, and Z33 is no exception. He sees the building by Italian architect Francesca Torzo as a fine sheet of paper: fragile, open to intervention, and full of possibilities. Paper becomes not only a metaphor but also a material and guiding principle for the exhibition. While the exterior of the art house appears sleek and complete, the interior feels like a ‘glossy’ shell inviting additions and homeliness. Beutler responds with both large and small interventions: integrating furniture, colorful walls, models, and even installing doors from his studio to create a more intimate space. This creates an interface – a bridge between people and architecture.
Not-so-stiff pants
From the first room, Beutler reshapes the architecture. In the elongated corridor, visitors walk past colorful columns, with light, tubular structures reaching up to ten meters high. These Stiff Pants, made of wire and paper, playfully reference monumental architecture. At the back of the space stands a kind of laminating machine designed by Beutler to coat the wire mesh with paper. It becomes a sculpture in itself – an expression of his vision of the museum as a workspace. He breaks with the image of the solitary artist in the studio; the work is created on-site, in dialogue with the team.
Light machine
In the ‘Tower’, Beutler intervenes not only in the space but also in the light. Four columns support a giant wooden paper sieve. A sturdy, translucent sheet of paper gently filters the light. This sheet was made in the courtyard, where a paper mill pulped old book pages. The pulp filled the sieve, and after drying, the whole was hoisted up. It now forms a floating ceiling, with visible fibers illuminated from above. This intervention refers to an early student work, Gipsdecke (2002).
Paper connections
Paper is one of Beutler’s favorite materials. In this exhibition, it appears in all shapes and colors. Moving beyond the flat surface, he creates three-dimensional sculptures: from large paper waffle grids to loops and curls. The Garden, Rustika, and Zustand mit Loops und Kringeln appear large and robust but are surprisingly fragile and demanding. Once they leave the tool, they can only be moved a few times. This highlights the contrast between the monumental and the temporary.
“For me, all those imperfections form a unique pattern. They make the process lively and real. That’s exactly the way of working that feels right to me — intuitive, efficient, and true to what emerges.”
Beutler designed the tools for these artworks himself. They are simple but require collaboration. It’s far from assembly-line work: users determine how they operate the tools, resulting in variations in size, color, and finish. As the process progresses, skills grow and the sculptures become more refined. The perfect imperfections are a desired effect and counter industrial standardization.
“I don’t work toward a fixed end result. What matters to me is the process — how we engage with the material, how we listen, respond, and leave space for what wants to emerge. My work is about connections: between forms, people, and moments. And those connections must be felt, visible in what I create.”
Scenography for a house
Haus Beutler divides the first floor into a series of smaller rooms, built from fragments of his work over the past 25 years. Between colorful walls, visitors discover models, tests, and videos of earlier projects. Due to their size, it’s impossible to show them all, so he brings together fragments of many projects. For the wooden structure, Beutler draws inspiration from traditional Japanese architecture – a model of refined craftsmanship and technical ingenuity. The partition walls are all the same length but were not designed for Z33. This is where the joy of making lies for him: how can standardized elements meaningfully align with a specific place?
From studio to flowing scenography
Beutler transforms one room into a weaving studio, with a monumental loom for carpets made of recycled textiles. The device traveled through various exhibitions and bears traces of collective use. One 400 kg carpet requires six people weaving for a week. The large textile sheets curl slightly and ripple across the floor of 'The Lake' – named after the ceiling with its undulating diamond pattern reminiscent of a water surface.
Symbolic door
At the end of the exhibition, Beutler – literally and figuratively – closes the door behind him. He responds to the architecture of Z33, where Wing 19 and Wing 58 seamlessly merge. To break that continuity, he placed the door from his old studio at the end of the exhibition – a more than symbolic gesture. It reflects his vision of the museum as a workspace: where visitors enter his studio at the beginning of the exhibition, they now leave through the same door he closed behind him every evening for years.
In collaboration with: Architecture students from UHasselt and Product Design students from LUCA School of Arts, Campus C-mine. The Hasselt beguinage—home to UHasselt’s new architecture campus—becomes a site of collaboration, knowledge-sharing, and experimentation.
Curator: Tim Roerig
Michael Beutler is an artist working in the field of sculpture and installation. He studied at the Städel school in Frankfurt Main from 1997 to 2003 and the Glasgow School of Art in 2000 and 2001. He taught at the Muthesius School of Art in Kiel in 2016 and 2017 and is a Professor for Sculpture at the HFBK in Hamburg since 2019.
Recent institutional solo exhibition include “Haus Beutler”, La Loge, Brussels, “Pump House” at Spike Island, Bristol and Nottingham Contemporary, Nottingham, “Moby Dick” at Hamburger Bahnhof Museum für Gegenwartskunst as well as “Plonger et Pluiser” at Hangar a Bananas, Nantes and “Stardust” at Wilhelm Hack Museum Ludwigshafen. He has also been part of international Biennales, such as the Singapore Biennale, Gwangju Biennale, Berlin Biennale and the Venice Biennale. A great deal of his work is dedicated to the development of public art projects which can be found for example at the Wilhelmina Polder, Netherlands “Polder Peil”, Fondatione La Raia, Liguria “Oak Barrel Baroque” or in Råby, Sweden,“Råby Planet”.
He had numerous solo exhibitions in Galleries such as Galerie Michael Neff, Frankfurt am Main, Galerie Nagel/Draxler in Berlin and Cologne, Galerie Bärbel Grässlin, Frankfurt am Main, Galeria Franco Soffiantino Arte Contemporanea, Turin, Pinksummer,Genua and Ehrhardt Flórez, Madrid.
