Weaving as Architecture - Michael Beutler

Artist
Michael Beutler

Venue
Z33 - House for Contemporary Art, Design & Architecture

City, Country
Hasselt, Belgium

Dates
28 September 2025 - 22 February 2026

Curator
Tim Roerig

Credits
Photo: Renaat Nijs + Useful Art Services
Video Video: Lieven Geuns

Z33 currently operates less as an exhibition space and more as a construction site that decided to remain open. Materials are stacked, pressed, stretched, woven. Paper becomes column, ceiling, skin.

Textiles spill across floors. Machines stand in the middle of rooms, not as tools hidden backstage, but as protagonists.

Michael Beutler does not decorate Francesca Torzo’s architecture. He interferes with it. Corridors are narrowed by towering wire-and-paper cylinders. In the tower, a suspended paper sieve filters daylight into something softer, fibrous, visibly made.

The building’s sharp edges meet soft surfaces, temporary partitions, inserted doors. Monumental gestures appear, yet they remain fragile. Everything feels both stable and provisional.

The production process is not background information. It is the work. Together with architecture and design students, guides and assistants, Beutler transforms Z33 into a collective workspace. Tools are simple, almost naive, but they demand coordination. Variations emerge through handling. Grids buckle. Surfaces ripple. Imperfections accumulate as structure rather than error.

Upstairs, a monumental weaving loom dominates a white room. Heavy carpets made of recycled textiles roll outward across the floor like terrain. What looks monumental is in fact dependent on continuous labor. What appears solid can barely be moved.

Michael Beutler is not about finished form. It is about how form holds, temporarily, through collaboration.

Michael Beutler online
Z33 on Instagram
Tim Roerig on Instagram

Installation views:

New on Catapult: