Laboratory or kitchen, home or atelier: microcosm. Peter Bauhuis' workshop is full of activity, in the grip of a genial chaos."My table is a palimpsest", Bauhuis exclaims, half amused, half embarrassed. A palimpsest is a piece of parchment that has been used more than once, on which earlier images have not been entirely erased, resulting in an accumulation of writings. Chance superimpositions challenge the understanding of the text while at the same time seducing the eye. Bauhuis' work also invites us to read between the lines, his pieces can have multiple meanings, and appearances are sometimes deceptive.

Bauhuis is capable of reducing jewellery to a few millimetres, to show that its magnetism remains intact. Yet his work also includes much larger formats, such as his series of full-sized vessels and bowls. These receptacles are full of themselves, or in other words, they contain pure potential: their functionality is not practical but poetic. The artist and goldsmith explores different alloys to achieve desired effects: a colour, a certain material strength, a texture. His execution is precise, and he always indicates the composition of the metals he has used. Paradoxically, scientific rigour is "betrayed" by spontaneous impulse, which brings the elements of accident and chance into play. When Bauhuis carried out a performance that entailed melting a chocolate rabbit with the heat from a photocopier, which in turn documented the successive states of transformation, copy by copy, he was already demonstrating his interest in "fusion" processes.

At the bottom of the vessels, the melted metal produces random stains that have an unusual pictorial nature, reminiscent of Japanese ink paintings. This oxidation and the rough textures on the inner and outer surfaces, as well as the subtle calligraphy-like cracks in the walls of the pieces, have something Asian about them. It is as if they shared the wabi-sabi aesthetic of traditional Japanese arts, in which imperfection and asymmetry are appreciated.

extract of the text 'My Table is a Palimpset or, The Secret Life of Objects' by Monica Gaspar

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