Bodies, Changed.

Bodies, Changed. Marks the reopening of Neonstudio 3 and the start of a new programme devoted to material and craft. Its title comes from the opening line of Ovid's Metamorphoses and points to the threshold the exhibition is about: the moment just before matter changes. Wood is still tree, clay still earth, wool still fleece, glass still sand, metal still ore. Before it becomes anything, material is only potential. Five materials, five ways of changing. Wood holds its form against time, as Daphne is held in laurel. Glass is born from the heat that could destroy it, like Semele in Zeus's fire. Wool becomes cloth only through repetition, as Arachne is spun into her own thread. Clay takes shape under the hand, as Prometheus shaped the first people from earth. Metal is refined by fire and hammer again and again, like Hephaestus remaking himself after his fall. Myth is used here as a lens for reading each material, not as the subject itself. What connects the work of Othmar Prenner, Andreas Rier, Clara Mayr, Daniel Costa and Romie Objetti is what happens in between: the intellect that sees a form before it exists, the craftsmanship that knows a material from the inside, and the time it takes to carve, fire, spin and forge. Each of them works as both maker and myth-maker, carrying raw matter towards a form it never had to take. Every object here is proof that change is never abstract. It happens in the hand, in the fire, in the fibre, in the material itself.