DRIFT Aeolus

This presentation takes place in the lead-up to the new DRIFT Museum opening in Amsterdam in 2026. It builds on Carpenters’ long-standing relationship with DRIFT, which dates to 2008, when the gallery’s founders Loïc Le Gaillard and Julien Lombrail first saw the artist duo exhibiting in Miami, immediately recognising their work’s resonance with the gallery’s focus on the intersection between form and functionality in contemporary art and design.

Aeolus is a suspended sculptural installation composed of hundreds of slender glass rods hanging from the ceiling. Using digital readings of its architectural surroundings, the work visualises the invisible paths of wind as it moves through space. The glass rods of the installation are arranged to capture a single moment within this continuous flow, suspending it in time. The work therefore transforms the ephemerality of wind into permanent physical presence, allowing the invisible dynamics of the space to become tangible.

At the heart of each glass rod in the new artwork is a small, hidden light. Together, these create a slow, shifting choreography of illumination whose changing rhythm and light intensity is activated in real time by the movement of visitors through the space. With subtle waves of light rippling across the sculpture, echoing the effects of wind, the work creates a dynamic sense of motion without any physical movement.

DRIFT’s founders Lonneke Gordijn and Ralph Nauta understand wind as one of Earth’s oldest and most essential forces — carrying seeds across continents, pollinating ecosystems, regulating climate through ocean and atmospheric circulation, dispersing moisture and nutrients and continuously influencing the evolution of life. “We feel it when we step outside — on our skin, through our clothes, in the way it moves through trees,” say the artists. “Yet despite its fundamental role, wind itself remains invisible. We know it only through its traces.”

Aeolus explores humanity’s perception of wind through stormy moments of disruption and uncertainty but also as a creative force that enables exchange, migration, renewal and growth. By giving form to a force that cannot be seen, the work invites us to rediscover our place within nature and recognise that the spaces we inhabit are continuously shaped by living systems beyond our perception. Gordijn and Nauta founded DRIFT in 2007, two years after graduating from Design Academy Eindhoven. With a multi-disciplinary team of over 60 people, the studio works on experiential sculptures, installations and performances that explore scenarios for the future, illuminating the parallels between man-made and natural structures through deconstructive, interactive and innovative processes. Carpenters has represented DRIFT since 2009.

The new DRIFT Museum will be an 8,000-square-metre space housed in the monumental Van Gendt Hallen in Amsterdam, whose grandeur, robustness and industrial character will enhance DRIFT’s space-filling artworks and kinetic installations. Designed by zU Studio in close collaboration with DRIFT, the museum was created specifically to accommodate and enhance the studio’s artworks, offering a new kind of museum experience that sparks wonder and encourages a deeper connection with nature and the planet.