Spiral Economy, 2025

At the close of the nineteenth century, vending machines began appearing in bustling train stations—mech­anized dispensers of drinks and foodstuffs. Around the same time, the oceans, long regarded as vast and inexhaustible, were being reshaped by industrial expansion. Small-scale fishing gave way to mechanized trawlers, sweeping the seas with un­precedented force. Once an untamed wilderness, the ocean was to become an extension of global commerce—its depths transformed into extraction sites for oil, minerals, and gas. The sculptural vending machine in Spiral Economy reframes mechanized con­sumerism. Traditionally stocked with plastic-wrapped goods, its spiraling coils instead cradle ammonites— fossilized remnants of ancient seas, suspended in deep geological time. An infinity mirror amplifies their slow, perpetual turn, extending their spirals into eternity—a hypnotic meditation on seemingly limitless cycles of the natural world. Once living oceanic creatures, these ammonites have now become petrified relics, yet their forms persist—echoing the ceaseless churn of life and death beneath the waves.

Trade, commodities, and currency underpin the work’s conceptual core. The coin slot is shaped like a conch shell, referencing one of the earliest objects used in exchange—the ancestor of modern currency. Just as the conch once held value across civilizations, the ammonite here becomes a new form of commodity, its worth measured not in scarcity or market speculation, but in slowness, accumulation, and deep time. The fossilized shell stands as a symbol of all mineral concretions and fossil fuels extracted from the Earth’s crust—life-forms long buried, now consumed as effortlessly as a vending machine snack.

Through the spiraling ammonites and reflective mirror, the work challenges the illusion of limitless consumption, urging viewers to confront time on a geological scale. It evokes the ocean not as an infinite resource, but as a fragile, imperiled reservoir of life—held in the balance between extraction and extinction, spiraling toward an uncertain future.