The Meaning of a Jewel in a Closed Casket 

I want to be generous with my work. Yet you will find out that every work carries something unnameable, something remains out of reach. Sometimes you feel like an essential element is just outside the frame, sometimes it seems like the setting is the result of something that has just happened or is about to happen. It is clear that something crucial is hidden from view. It gives the impression that it can present itself at any moment, and this creates a tension. What is absent becomes enormously present.

Yet for me, this phenomenon of ambiguity increases the value of a work. In that unspoken lays a deeper intimacy. Because real intimacy cannot be explained, but can only be felt.

And so I come to the proposition that the jewel, hidden in the dark of its closed casket, has more value than the jewel in an opened casket.

A closed box is an object that can be opened, it contains an infinite amount of possibilities. A closed box is loaded with unknown and possible elements, it generates hypotheses and dreams, escaping from itself to an infinite amount of other treasures. It is a wonderful psychological theme, namely that there will always be more things in a closed box than in an open box.