PRESENT

In my work PRESENT, I examine the intersection of ritual celebration and industrial overproduction. Three number candles, in their original packaging and arranged to form the number 666, serve as the starting point for an investigation into the mechanisms of contemporary consumption. My aim is to illustrate the subtle, almost playful seduction by global corporations, which increasingly transform our private celebrations into "material battles" (Materialschlachten), suggesting that joy can be defined through the accumulation of unnecessary accessories.

By leaving these omnipresent artifacts of modern self-staging in their unopened original packaging, I emphasize their status as pure, untouched commodity. Enclosed within the austerity of a white, square frame, the objects are stripped of their functional context, the act of burning and ritual passing. The promise of the party is literally frozen. A deliberate tension arises between the colorful, almost naive materiality of the object and the dark connotation of the numerical sequence. In this context, the number 666 does not function as a religious memorial, but as an ironic cipher for a system that loses itself in excess, until only the shell, the commodity, and the parodic surplus remain.