Eric VanUytven approaches the project through material extraction and transformation, engaging urban wastelands as layered surfaces that carry traces of industrial, social, and environmental processes.

He collects materials such as dust, rust, waste, and fragments, treating them as active carriers of information rather than passive remnants. Through processes of extraction, transformation, and reconfiguration, these materials are shaped into sculptural works and surface-based compositions that preserve and reinterpret the memory embedded within the landscape.

Central to this practice is the Palimpsest series: sculptural objects that exist at the intersection of material, ritual, and performance. These works are not merely autonomous sculptures but ritual-bound objects that emerge through acts of collecting, assembling, and offering. They establish a communication line between the urban environment and the natural world, creating a bridge between two seemingly opposing realities. Through gestures of offering and gratitude, the works acknowledge the reciprocal relationship between humans, landscape, and material, transforming discarded matter into vessels of connection and meaning.

VanUytven's practice operates as a form of urban archaeology, where extraction becomes a method of reading and rearticulating the material memory of the city. Layers of erosion, industrial residue, and human intervention are condensed into objects that function as physical archives—records of time, transformation, and collective inscription.

By working directly within the landscape, creation becomes a responsive act rather than a predefined execution. Materials are not transported into the site but extracted from it, allowing each work to develop from within its own context. This reinforces a process-based approach in which making is inseparable from observing, collecting, and reacting.

Exploration functions as the driving force throughout the practice. It introduces openness, uncertainty, and contingency, allowing unexpected discoveries to shape the outcome. Rather than pursuing a predetermined result, every new location contributes its own material conditions, histories, and insights.

Movement along waterways connects geographically distant sites into a continuous field of exchange. Encounters with people, places, materials, and environments become integral to the work itself, embedding social, ecological, and spatial relationships into the artistic process. Together, these elements form an interconnected system in which learning, making, ritual, and exploration continuously inform one another, resulting in a practice that is both materially grounded and relationally driven.