Exceed

A warrior adorned beyond battle. A relic of ambition. A body trapped inside its own myth.

 

In Exceed, Benjamin Pompe conjures a figure that is both monument and mausoleum, a digital dream fossilized in wax. It is composed like an avatar dragged from an online role-playing game, but sculpted with the pathos of a forgotten saint. His figure wears a helmet of classical grandeur, carries flowers like armor, shoes like trophies, and a neckpiece that flickers between chandelier and halo. In its ornate stillness, it is triumphant and tragic.

 

The work originates from Pompe’s long-standing inquiry into the psychology of digital accumulation, first explored in the project Dump Inventory, which mapped the parallels between virtual hoarding in RPGs and the historical Cabinet of Curiosities. Even in boundless, imagined worlds, we collect, objects, titles, achievements, symbols of worth in systems without weight. This drive to exceed, to transcend, impress, dominate, echoes both the digital economies of online games and the darker compulsions of our offline lives.

 

The figure in Exceed is caught mid-glory, mid-failure. Frozen in a rigid, almost Egyptian posture, it is rich in symbolic ornament but poor in freedom. Pompe sculpts contradiction: status as burden, beauty as excess, instinct as architecture. The wax introduces a haunting materiality, fragile, soft, temporary, offering a tenderness that resists the machine logic of gamified existence.

 

At its core, Exceed is about becoming: becoming more, becoming multiple, becoming unreal. In the surrealist space, where gender and identity mutate freely, Pompe’s figure whispers of freedom, but also of loss. It cannot move. It cannot weep. It shines and grieves at once.