Machteld Rullens

Working at the crossroads of painting and sculpture, Machteld Rullens reimagines cardboard as her primary medium. She transforms these humble, everyday shipping boxes—materials often discarded—into sculptural wall works by layering oil paint and resin with playful aggression. This process turns fragile forms into durable, porcelain-like objects that hover between composition, architecture, and abstraction. Working through gestures of scraping, stacking, folding, and coating, Rullens infuses her creations with both formal rigor and spontaneous expression. The resulting pieces preserve traces of their cardboard origins—soft edges, subtle imperfections, and the tactile quality of the material—while transcending their everyday beginnings. Her work also navigates the tension between form and emptiness: the boxes’ flaps, pulp, and folds become visual echoes of longing and architectural space, while the shiny surfaces evoke memory and sensory resonance. Rullens invites viewers into a space where carelessness and precision combine, allowing the mundane to unfold as a poetic, sculptural presence. ...