Christophe Muylaert

This work presents a transparent drinking glass fully embedded in a solid block of epoxy resin. Completely sealed and immobilised, the glass becomes inaccessible and stripped of all practical function. It can no longer hold liquid, serve a purpose, or mediate any human action. It stands as an object existing in isolation, withdrawn from the realm of use.

In this state of preserved stillness and inaccessibility, the object touches upon what Immanuel Kant calls the Ding an sich: the thing as it exists independently of human perception, interpretation, or instrumentalisation. By removing all utility, the viewer is compelled to encounter the object not as a tool but as an autonomous entity with an unknowable inner reality.

The resin acts as a paradoxical medium: it reveals while it conceals. The glass remains visible, yet radically out of reach. The work foregrounds the tension between what we believe we perceive and what actually presents itself — between phenomenon and thing-in-itself. The glass becomes a silent confrontation with our impulse to project meaning, purpose, or categorisation onto the world.

Our cognition of the world is nothing more than a game of mirrors.