SENT THROUGH ASSUMED BODIES
In dialogue with Helmut Stallaerts
FVTVRIST Magazine // Parliament Gallery
5 February 2026
FVTVRIST discovered the exhibition ‘Sent Through Assumed Bodies’ in the heart of the Marais at Parliament Gallery, a space known for its precise, understated exhibitions and strong conceptual focus. Helmut Stallaerts approaches the body as a site of passage: figures emerge, withdraw, and dissolve into a state of continuous metamorphosis.
In this conversation, Helmut Stallaerts speaks openly about what lies behind dissolving figures, about bodies pushed through systems of abstraction; about what has happened to meaning, care, and responsibility in recent years; and, ultimately, about a lingering question that refuses to disappear: what happened to Mary?
Helmut Stallaerts, Sent through assumed bodies, exhibition view, 2026 © Aurélien Mole, courtesy of Parliament.
When you look at the world today, do you feel the body has become something fragile and almost political?
Yes, I think so. The body is fragile, finitude and decay are simply laws of nature, but we try desperately to smooth that over through technocracy. We flee into screens, we dissociate just to avoid feeling that vulnerability. Politically, we risk being reduced to objects without a soul. Large systems tend to make bodies equal: like isolated ‘battery hens’’, objects without deeper connection. And yet, there is a core that does not age, a resonance that connects us and that no technocracy can flatten out. I don’t want to be black and white about technology, but the surrogate is becoming so vast it seems to be taking over everything. When you see how disconnected people walk around, you feel we are losing that essential contact.
In your work, figures don’t stand their ground, they seem to exist between two worlds, almost like ghosts. Do they disappear because they’re pushed out, or because they choose to leave
They disappear because matter comes and goes; that is entropy. But the presence remains. That which is intangible escapes that decay. That so-called withdrawal, that in-between state, creates an opening. It gives the viewer the chance to create their own story. They can look in the mirror without me filling in everything for them. They don't so much leave; they are simply unable to be fixed in a reality that keeps shifting.
Your works feel like they’ve been through something. What kind of pressure are these bodies under?
For me, body and mind are one and this relationship is, in essence, also one with everything that lives. The pressure comes from the dissociation of the modern world, and from the trauma we unconsciously pass on to each other. On top of that is the compulsion to optimize everything. But the human operates precisely through the flaw. The lack is perhaps the most crucial part of our being. The bodies in my work are under pressure because they refuse to conform to that norm. My images are open but also hermetic; they refuse to fully expose themselves. The essential, after all, can never be fully objectified.
Helmut Stallaerts, Dakini with a lemon, 2024, oil on animal bones, 36 x 41 cm © Aurélien Mole, courtesy of Parliament.
Helmut Stallaerts, Mary’s Dissolving, detail view, 2025, mixed materials, glass, wax, resin, mirror, 191 x 41.5 cm © Aurélien Mole, courtesy of Parliament.
What’s the story behind Mary’s Dissolving?
Mary is an archetype. She stands in a long timeline that was always cyclically present. That Mary is dissolving now has to do with the fact that those primal images seem to be vanishing in our world. Look at the pre-Renaissance in Italy : despite patriarchal traits, this culture was often fertile, with a strong matriarchal aspect. Today that is at an all-time low. She seems to be disappearing into a conical blur. You might see a 'disappearance tunnel', or the dynamics of a black hole, or perhaps a birth canal. There is no single reading; it is a transition into something else.
Over the past few years, we’ve seen bodies controlled, isolated, and reduced to data. How much of that reality is present in this exhibition?
That is exactly how I feel it. I try to show that ensoulment can never be converted into data. Mortality belongs to being human; accepting that keeps our body in a fluid state that no scanner can grasp. Reductionism stems from fear of the incomprehensible. Because we cannot grasp it, we submit to systems that treat us as dead matter. We keep ourselves in a simplified void. While that ‘dark energy’ we flee from, can actually activate us. It is that intangible part that keeps us unpredictable and alive.
MY IMAGES ARE OPEN BUT ALSO HERMETIC; THEY REFUSE TO FULLY EXPOSE THEMSELVES. THE ESSENTIAL, AFTER ALL, CAN NEVER BE FULLY OBJECTIFIED.
Helmut Stallaerts, Lin, 2025, oil on skull, mirror, resin, 28 x 31 cm© Aurélien Mole, courtesy of Parliament.
Lin seems to exist between two realities, between life and death. What’s the story behind this work?
Lin is the upper part of a skull I received from a doctor. You can see this work as a relic: it shows that things do not stop, but continue somewhere. The bone is the carrier that decays, but something is transferred. Perhaps it is that collective unconscious that will never stop being transferred, a light that keeps burning, unless everything is converted into 01010101.
Where do you usually draw inspiration from?
I create images because they cannot be captured in words. I don't know if inspiration comes from ‘somewhere’; it simply comes as a necessity to process this world. I see myself as an observer; a witness. My interest lies mainly in things I cannot logically encompass, and in that which lies outside of me that tries everything to fix in place, that imprisone it. I want to try to break that.
Looking at the last few years, what do you feel has happened to meaning, care, and responsibility?
Responsibility seems to have evaporated; no one seems responsible anymore. Perhaps on a micro-level, for family or work, but even there, impotence seeps in. For me, responsibility has primarily to do with consciousness, also about the difficult things: the traumas, death, the lack. There don't need to be ready-made answers, only the realization that it is part of it. It involves caring for the other, for nature, for the living. The material dissolves, but the care for that intangible, that which essentially connects us, remains.
When you look at Sent Through Assumed Bodies now, what part of yourself do you recognize in it?
Since I chose it as the title, and because my work is an extension of my body, I suspect so.
About Helmut Stallaerts
Helmut Stallaerts was born in 1982 in Brussels (Belgium). He studied at the Université de Saint-Lukas (Belgium) and graduated in 2004 from the Düsseldorf Academy of Fine Arts (Germany). His work has been exhibited at CAB in Brussels (Belgium), the Musée Dhondt-Dhaenens in Deurle (Belgium), La Maison Rouge in Paris (France), Ibid Projects in London (UK), Galerie Baronian in Brussels (Belgium), Kunsthaus Zürich (Switzerland), and the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo (Japan).
Source: Parliament
