This installation presents an apparently simple scene: a black platform filled with white sand, bearing the clear trace of a rolling object — a curved line ending at a transparent cube that encloses a ball. The visual impression immediately suggests a causal link: the ball must have rolled and left its trace in the sand. But this assumption is misleading. As the ball is entirely embedded in resin, it could not have moved.
The work confronts the viewer with their own cognitive automatisms. Drawing on the philosophies of David Hume and Immanuel Kant, it questions the immediacy with which we perceive causal relationships in the world around us. For Hume, causality is not an objective feature of reality, but a habit of the mind: we expect a cause whenever we see an effect. Kant goes further: the human mind projects categories such as causality onto experience — we cannot help but think in terms of cause and effect.
Tracing the Unreal renders this mental projection visible. The installation is a visual paradox, a silent trap for thought: what appears self-evident turns out to be impossible. In the tension between perception and reality, between thinking and knowing, space opens up for doubt — and wonder.