Recontextualization, temporal leaps, syncretism, and hybrid associations among heterogeneous objects lie at the core of Peruvian artist Nicolás Lamas’s practice. His projects seem to arise from a close observation of the global circulation of animals, humans, plants, insects, bacteria, digital data, and commodities—flows that constantly leave traces and exert tangible influence. The idea of flux, and of the metamorphosis of artefacts within material and post‑digital culture, is a persistent theme in Lamas’s work. Even when transformations remain imperceptible, everything exists inside a vast, dynamic system—like an organism, a swarm, or an assemblage—in which all elements are interlinked. Lamas is fascinated by the notion that everything is infused with active, transformative forces—often invisible yet always at work. He draws on holistic and animist perspectives that regard all things as ‘alive’ and interconnected, where matter itself acts rather than merely receives action. Objects, in this view, are not passive things but agents participating in ongoing exchanges and transmutations. His latest European solo show, "Fluid Minds" at Max Goelitz Gallery in Berlin, stages what he calls a “speculative archaeology of the present,” in which the boundaries between matter, thought, and technology dissolve into a mesh of interdependent relationships. For Lamas, archaeology is a mode of thinking that emerges from absence and fracture—from what resists total erasure and lingers as traces or eroded fragments. He is captivated by its speculative nature: the effort to shape the invisible and reconstruct the incomplete. Archaeology, for him, is inseparable from uncertainty; it thrives on fragments while engaging the voids that inevitably separate them. Each reading of the past drawn from material remains is partial, ambiguous, prone to error—and always open to reinterpretation.
Alexander Burenkov: Your practice often combines organic and industrial elements to create hybrid forms. This hybridity is even reflected in the titles of your works—take "Hybrid Ergonomics" (2020), for example, which incorporates a shark ray jaw, a plastic helmet component, and aluminum. How is the hybridization of digital culture and physical objects present in your projects?
Nicolás Lamas: The hybridity in my work emerges as a continuous negotiation between different modes of existence: the material, the virtual, the organic, and the artificial. I’m interested in exploring how these worlds infiltrate, contaminate, and transform one another, resulting in pieces that disrupt their original logic. We live in a world filled with objects that no longer fit neatly into a single category. In this context, digital culture has profoundly altered how we perceive reality. Yet my interest in the digital lies not in its use as a medium or production tool, but as a conceptual framework—one that encompasses information flows, data processing, exchange, storage, memory, obsolescence, and virtuality. I’m particularly drawn to how these phenomena find analogues in the material world. What fascinates me, paradoxically, is the materiality of the digital: the physical components that make it possible—its infrastructures, interfaces, and the entire chain of raw material extraction, production, and circulation—along with the environmental impact and societal dependence these processes entail. When I work with materials, I see them as containers of information—like hard drives that store multiple layers of meaning: biological, industrial, historical, symbolic, and more. These layers interact constantly across different levels. By juxtaposing organic remnants with technological fragments or industrial components, I aim to generate tensions that reconfigure their inherent nature, while also creating spaces of ambiguity—where categories blur and meanings become unstable. In this sense, hybridity is not merely a formal strategy but a conceptual tool for examining how living organisms, technology, memory, and systems of organization are interwoven across both natural and cultural domains. This logic of connection and archiving also extends to my Instagram account. I use it not only as a platform to share my work but also as a space for collecting references and conducting research. It has become, unintentionally, an ever-expanding digital archive—an extension of my practice—where images of my pieces coexist with texts and external materials in ongoing dialogue. It functions both as a databank and as a tool for organizing and reviewing the layers of meaning that evolve throughout my work overtime. Often, images shared there serve as the seeds for future pieces or projects that gradually take shape.
AB: How does the circulation of information and data overload influence your practice?
NL: We live in an era defined by an overabundance of information, where access to knowledge is no longer a privilege but rather a constant and relentless exposure to data, images, discourses, and multiple—often contradictory—narratives. The true challenge of our time is no longer obtaining information but developing the critical capacity to discern what holds value, to filter what is relevant, and to silence what merely creates noise. Yet beyond the vertigo these continuous flows can provoke, I find something deeply fascinating in observing how objects, organisms, ideas, and images move, migrate, and reconfigure themselves—following trajectories that, though seemingly disconnected, reveal underlying patterns or shared structures. These logics of circulation and transformation, operating across both material and digital realms, interest me not only for their aesthetic or formal qualities but because they open up possibilities for reimagining relationships between heterogeneous elements when they come into dialogue. My work is situated precisely within this ongoing intersection and contamination of information, in the exploration of encounters between diverse entities, often originating from distant contexts with no apparent connection. I’m drawn to the friction and balance that emerge between objects belonging to different categories. These acts of connection, rather than aiming to organize or classify, seek to dismantle certainties, disrupt hierarchies, and propose new ways of relating to our surroundings. In this sense, my artistic practice becomes a tool for reflecting on the present through a logic of coexistence and interdependence, where everything seems connected—often on levels we are not fully able to perceive.
AB: Many of your sculptures and installations involve the mechanical juxtaposition of technological objects with organic materials. This contrast generates compelling aesthetic tensions and layered meanings. It evokes Lautréamont’s famous Surrealist phrase: “Beautiful as the chance encounter of a sewing machine and an umbrella on an autopsy table.” Can you speak about the significance of this method in your work?
NL: Many of my works function as speculative exercises made from remnants, fragments, and displaced objects. In assembling them, I’m not aiming for harmonious encounters but rather for tensions between seemingly opposing forces that find a strange and unpredictable balance—a space where different material and symbolic histories enter into dialogue and collision simultaneously. I’m interested in exploring the nature of things beyond sign or language—in ambiguous readings that transcend the rational subjectivity that seeks to define everything through naming. For me, it’s a way of thinking through objects or generating material notes that catalyze ideas that cannot be fully defined. Each piece is a contingent body—just one possibility among many. I’m drawn to the potentiality of things—their latent state in which an object can become something else, losing its essence, category, meaning, or value through a seemingly banal gesture or action. Objects carry a history of origin, displacement, and interaction with other material agents. They are not only what we recognize and name; they are also material entities—agents with physical properties such as form, weight, consistency, temperature, chemical composition, scale, resistance, and temporality. All of this provides multiple layers of data that interact with their surroundings and with other objects, often at frequencies we are unable to perceive.
AB: Is your practice informed by specific theoretical or spiritual frameworks such as New Materialism or "Mono no Aware", the Japanese philosophy of empathy toward the transience of things? Would you say your aesthetic is aimed at cultivating a sense of empathy in the viewer—an awareness of impermanence, memory, and continuity with the past?
NL: I do not begin with a fixed theoretical framework, nor do I aim to align my work with any specific movement. However, certain ideas that inform my practice are drawn from New Materialism, Posthumanism, and concepts such as swarm intelligence. What interests me about these perspectives is how they challenge the centrality of the human subject and create space to consider forms of non-human agency that operate collectively. I am particularly drawn to the notion that matter is not passive but possesses its capacity to act, to affect, and to be affected. That said, I’m not interested in turning these ideas into a rigid framework or guiding doctrine. Instead, I prefer them to function as a subtle background presence, allowing the work to incorporate them in an open-ended way—without forcing a specific interpretation or confining it to predetermined categories.
AB: Human figures are absent from your work, replaced by speculative relics of civilization. Is your practice a critique of anthropocentrism—an attempt to envision the extinction of humanity and the world beyond us?
NL: The human figure appears in my work in a fragmented and dislocated manner, never as a complete or recognizable body. It manifests through scattered parts—limbs, bones, prosthetics, material traces that evoke something corporeal—dispersed throughout a space. I’m not interested in representing the human being directly, but rather in evoking its traces through objects that refer to its form or have been designed to house, extend, or protect the body, such as helmets, gloves, or footwear. In this sense, the human body appears as a spectral presence embedded in objects, in their remnants, and in the ruins of their technologies. More than offering an explicit critique of anthropocentrism, I aim to create shifts that deactivate the centrality of the human and its hierarchical position above all else. I operate from a logic in which the human is not the center, but rather one material instance within an ecology where the living and the inert exchange information and energy at different levels and intensities, coexisting and mutually affecting one another. Imagining a world without us is not, for me, a dystopian gesture—but a way to allow things to acquire autonomy beyond our projections and the narratives we construct to give meaning and order to the world.
AB: Your projects function like hypertexts: interconnected, recursive, and layered. You’ve described your work not as a collection of independent pieces but as a growing network of associations—speculative exercises evolving into a complex thought system through objects and images. You’ve said: “I see my work as continuous dialogues, as exchanges of energy and information in constant flow, operating on multiple layers of meaning.” What other key principles shape the world you are building through your art?
NL: One of the central principles in my practice is the concept of the liminal—understood as an intermediate state of transition or becoming. This broad idea permeates many aspects of my work. The condition of ambiguity, of existing “in-between,” feels essential to understanding my practice as a whole. I’m drawn to the idea that objects, ideas, and materials inhabit a fluid, unresolved space where everything remains open to transformation—in form, state, or meaning. Another key principle is the reconfiguration of time. I’m interested in crafting non-linear, diachronic narratives in which ancestral pasts and possible futures collapse into the present—where the geological past and the current ecological crisis might be read simultaneously on the same surface. Through this approach, I aim to build temporal bridges that connect objects and stories from disparate contexts, opening new possibilities for perceiving the world and the fragility of our species. Mobility and flow are equally significant in my practice—not only conceptually but also as physical actions within the studio, the street, or the exhibition space. The experience of movement and displacement is fundamental not only in relation to materials but also in how viewers navigate and explore an exhibition as a territory to be traversed and discovered. This dynamic creates a system of references that deepens and complicates the experience. Finally, I would highlight the concept of balance. I am deeply interested in equilibrium—both formal and conceptual. My work embodies a persistent tension between opposing forces that simultaneously overflow and contain one another, ultimately finding a precise point where coexistence becomes possible.
AB: Encountering your work often feels like a collapse of time—where the deep time of prehistory converges with the near future. It recalls Manuel De Landa’s "A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History", where he maps the material and energetic flows of human societies over the past millennium. De Landa emphasizes matter’s morphogenetic potential as a driver of historical change. How do you conceptualize the non-linearity of time in your practice?
NL: Manuel De Landa’s book has been—and continues to be—a significant reference in my research as an artist. For this reason, the conception of time in my work doesn’t follow a chronological or linear sequence of events. Instead, it’s structured through layers, interferences, and superimpositions. There is no fixed past or predictable future toward which we are heading, but rather multiple temporalities coexisting and contaminating one another. In this sense, I understand non-linear time as an active and transformative force, rather than a passive framework that merely organizes events. In my work, this conception manifests as a rhizomatic, expanded, and fragmented network in which different temporal layers coexist, collide, and reconfigure. This structure does not follow a logic of progressive evolution or closed narrative, but instead makes room for uncertainty, instability, and emergence.
AB: You don’t work in a traditional studio. Instead, each of your projects is site-specific, shaped by the exhibition context. At home, you work through sketches, notes, and reading to create the conceptual framework for each piece. What were you reading while preparing your most recent show at Max Goelitz Gallery in Berlin? What was the point of departure for that exhibition?
NL: If I had to highlight one text that served as a starting point for the exhibition, it would be Ricard Solé’s research on what he calls “solid and liquid brains.” I was particularly intrigued by his suggestion that certain systems—like insect colonies, neural networks, or microbial communities—can develop complex forms of organization and intelligence without requiring a centralized structure. In these systems, information flows fluidly through numerous mobile and adaptable connections, without a central core regulating everything. The idea of decentralized intelligence—emerging from the interaction between simple elements—was incredibly powerful for me when thinking about both the functioning of our social and technological networks and the way an artwork or exhibition might be structured. It made me realize that thought doesn’t have to be confined to a single mind or rigid framework; it can emerge through interaction, distribution, and dynamic processes that continuously transform and adapt as a means of survival.
AB: Could you elaborate on the ideas behind the title of your recent solo show "Fluid Minds" at Max Goelitz Gallery?
NL: The title serves as a metaphor for exploring forms of intelligence that transcend the individual mind—conceived as relational, dynamic, and unstable systems. I’m interested in understanding the mind not as a closed entity, but as a network that adapts and mutates—much like certain biological or technological systems that function through decentralization and interdependence. This mind isn’t confined to a single body; it overflows, fragments, and continually reconfigures itself in relation to other bodies, systems, and materials. Thinking in terms of “liquid brains” requires moving away from the traditional notion of thought as something centralized or autonomous. The mind can reside in an electrical network, in the memory of an object, or within a colony of organisms. In the exhibition, many works emerged from the intersection of fragmented bodies, dysfunctional technologies, industrial waste, and organic structures. “Fluid” also signifies a state of constant flow and transformation. These works are not fixed or definitive objects but unstable entities that may continue to mutate in future projects. This liquidity is a mode of thinking—a mind defined not by what it knows, but by its capacity to adapt, connect, shift form, and open new interpretations. "Fluid Minds" proposes a space where cognitive processes are not exclusive to humans but arise from the interaction of matter, form, energy, and time. It’s a landscape of dispersed intelligences and agencies that invites us to rethink our relationship with the environment in more expansive and complex terms.
