The feeling of inexplicable loss and yearning for something unknown is addressed in Beny Wagner’s video work by means of unexpected metaphors: camouflage and petroleum. Camouflage becomes the veneer of the human desire to subjugate the landscape to its demands while simultaneously yearning for a complete immersion in its materiality. Petroleum is at once the great global unifier and that which makes those things in immediate proximity stand at irreconcilable distance. In his video, Beny Wagner attempts to translate overwhelming and ungraspable global reality into an internalised, uncertain relationship to the self. Bio: German artist Beny Wagner was born and still lives in Berlin. He graduated from Bard College New York and recently was a participant at the Jan Van Eyck academy. His main area of interest is the intersection of perception, language and material. Through a mixture of creative speculation and research he has developed a practice in moving image and writing. His work attempts to address underlying structures and gestures that form political narratives. His recent show at Van Eyck in Maastricht dealt with the pseudo-intimate relations between an Airbnb-tenant and his host; a casual yet awkward familiarity between two practical strangers playing out their respective roles of intimacy and sincerity and the (visual) languages that accompanies these relations.