About

Artist Statement

Johannes Thiel (*1999, Germany) works across media, from digital graphics and renderings to sculptures and object constellations. Their visual language is shaped by mechanical systems, industrial fabrication methods and digital design processes. The objects evoke functional devices, biomechanical prototypes, prosthetic body fragments or architectural interfaces. Forms reminiscent of exoskeletons or so-called “shields” — outer shells, protective armor or modular cladding components that resemble technical limbs — appear repeatedly.

His works explore the relationship between technology and organism, not as a binary opposition but as overlapping, permeable domains. Construction impulses are translated into complex systems. The resulting technoid objects are sterile sketches of industrial logic, pseudo-technologies with an organic, almost creature-like appearance. These hybrid entities are not static but conceived as transformable systems that allow for constantly shifting constellations. Their supposed functionality ultimately leads nowhere. Movements, signals and patterns appear as fragments of a system that simulates itself. There seems to be life within them: they tremble, stretch, change shape or posture, acting like robots in standby mode — too precise to appear natural, too ambiguous to be clearly identified as machines.

Through automated manufacturing processes such as 3D printing, laser cutting or CNC milling, the digital, rule-based designs are transformed into physical objects. In their formal logic, they intersect with biomimetics, morphogenesis and digital parametric design. The resulting structures appear not built but grown, shaped by industrial protocols and algorithmic grammars made of repetition, mutation and deviation. Their surfaces are smooth, sealed and sterile, resisting any visible trace of authorship. The human fingerprint disappears in these depersonalized production processes, leaving behind bodies without origin — extracted from a world where evolution and technology converge. A new form of corporeality emerges, one that exists without the human.

The works evoke the idea of a future archaeology: organic apparatuses that oscillate between prototype and fossil, fragments of a system that cannot be fully deciphered. They approach the posthuman not as utopia or dystopia, but as a discourse already unfolding — shaped by contemporary tools and technologies. The otherness in these objects is a reflection of a present that has already become futuristic.

Johannes Thiel is currently studying Fine Arts at the UDK Berlin under Prof. Karsten Konrad, he lives and works in Berlin.

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