**‘Watch with your gut, listen to your soul’**

This is the artistic compass of Dutch visual artist Peter Vial (1957).

Self-taught and intuitively driven, Vial creates work that balances social engagement with personal reflection. His practice began with painting in 2007, but he soon felt confined by the flatness of the canvas. Since 2010 he has expanded into mixed media and three-dimensional forms, developing a distinctive language in mosaic, glass, ceramics and reclaimed materials.

Today his work moves freely between sculpture, installation and public art.

Vial is known for colorful, tactile constructions that combine geometry with emotion. Influenced by De Stijl, architecture and street culture, he uses mosaic not as decoration but as a structural skin — a way to give volume, rhythm and depth to form. Shards of glass, Delft Blue ceramics, mirror fragments, cabochons and even pieces of his own earlier paintings are layered into new compositions. Fragment becomes building block; memory becomes material.

Wrapping a shape is, for Vial, both a physical and psychological act: assembling, dismantling and rebuilding mirrors an inner process of letting go and starting again.

His sculptures often begin as rough constructions that are later “wrapped” in weather-resistant layers, allowing them to live outdoors. Many works function as scale models for architectural or life-size interventions. Increasingly, he integrates found or discarded objects — satellite dishes, traffic signs, benches and urban remnants — transforming them into poetic carriers of color and meaning. What was overlooked becomes monumental.

Community and place are central to his practice.

With a background in youth welfare and social work, Vial has long been attentive to the stories of neighbourhoods and families. His artworks invite participation and dialogue rather than passive viewing. He sees art as a connector — something that can soften public space, create encounters and spark shared ownership.

Over the years he has realised numerous site-specific works in Amsterdam South-East and beyond, from mosaicked walls and footpaths to interventions in streets, parks and community spaces. His projects often arise from local needs or conversations with residents, turning art into a collective gesture.

Alongside public commissions, Vial develops autonomous sculptures and installations in which painting, mosaic, glass and textile merge. Recent work also explores collaborations with other artists and layered techniques that combine canvas, transparency and light, blurring the boundaries between image and object.

At the heart of everything lies intuition.

For Vial, making art is a form of listening — to material, to memory, to the world around him. His works are not just objects, but invitations: to look closer, to reflect, and to feel connected.