Nigredo, Albedo, Rubedo

solo exhibition, Fenster/Schule Gallery, Prague, 2026

Nigredo, Albedo and Rubedo displayed across three gallery windows, with the street reflected in the glass.

Nigredo, Albedo, Rubedo is a triptych made from discarded metal packaging, primarily containers for alcoholic drinks. Its three panels follow the stages of alchemical transformation — blackening, whitening and reddening — and move from animal to human to sign. The fragments are cut, sorted and joined with visible staples. The same matter is not restored to what it was, but enabled to continue differently. Material transformation is both the subject of the images and the work through which they are made.

Detail of Nigredo: overlapping silver and gold metal fragments held together by dense rows of staples.

Nigredo, 2025
Reclaimed sheet metal, primarily alcohol packaging. 110 × 120 cm. Detail.

Nigredo belongs to the animal. A raven, the bird of death and decomposition, hovers above a chaotic field of broken matter. Yet it also flies out of the image, towards the light of the second panel, where the bird of decay becomes a phoenix rising from ash. Death is not only an ending here, but the beginning of transformation.

Detail of Albedo: a hand-shaped form assembled from smooth metal against a field of ridged gold-coloured packaging.

Albedo, 2026
Reclaimed sheet metal, primarily alcohol packaging. 110 × 120 cm. Detail.

Albedo belongs to the human. It is purification through reason: the work of distinguishing what is needed from what can be left behind. The image itself has been cut apart and the inessential omitted. We see the back of a figure facing forward, in the same direction as us, while a hand “looks” backwards through the flowing hair. The eyes cannot see behind the body, but the hand can search there. White is the stage in which differences become visible.

Detail of Rubedo: red printed packaging joined to silver and gold metal fragments with staples.

Rubedo, 2026
Reclaimed sheet metal, primarily alcohol packaging. 110 × 120 cm. Detail.

Rubedo belongs to the sign: mo-nu-ment. The world of the first panel’s chaos has been assembled again, but differently. This change is also literal: the metal has been turned from front to back, revealing red. This is rubedo, the reddening — matter showing that a transformation has taken place. A moment is rearranged into a monument: a temporary configuration given form and duration.

The sequence can also be read as a transformation of consciousness. An ending leaves fragments behind: experiences, attachments and former versions of oneself. They cannot be erased, but they can be distinguished, rearranged and given another place within the whole. The question running through all three images is not how to begin from nothing, but how to continue with what already exists.

This exhibition is part of the broader body of Metal Works.