And the person presumably responsible for it.
Buttersnaps is a private collection of mechanisms, specimens, and objects of uncertain purpose, maintained by a single individual based in Belgium. The collection has been accumulating since approximately the age of fourteen, when the curator began blowtorching toys, dissolving dolls in paint thinner, and constructing improvised explosives from sugar and fertiliser. At the time, this was not recognized as an artistic practice. In retrospect, the classification has been revised.
The collection spans electronics, mechanical devices, preserved biological specimens, modified instruments, and construction projects of disputed intellectual property. Materials include human bone, spring steel, salvaged cathode ray tubes, newspaper obituaries, specimen-grade ethanol, ABS plastic of Chinese origin, and whatever else seemed like a reasonable idea at the time.
Working methods involve 3D scanning, CNC milling, circuit design, diaphonization, papier-mâché, and the occasional application of fire. The common thread is not medium or method but a persistent interest in what happens when things are taken apart, repurposed, or made to do something they were not originally designed to do.
There is no manifesto. The work exists at the intersection of mechanical experimentation, specimen culture, and dark absurdism. Some pieces produce sound. Some preserve the dead. Some do both. The results tend to be precise, unsettling, and quietly funny — though the humor is never announced and the viewer is under no obligation to find it.
The collection treats life, death, and machinery with the same detached curiosity. Objects are presented as they are: documented, catalogued, and described with the clinical tone of someone filing a lab report on something that probably should not exist.
Cabinet-of-curiosities tradition. Circuit bending. Biological specimen preparation. The specific satisfaction of watching something melt. A childhood that did not go as planned and an adulthood spent turning that fact into objects rather than explanations.
Yes, the skulls are real. No, you cannot play a wrong note. Yes, everything here was assembled by one person. No, there is no formal training involved. Yes, the name is Buttersnaps. No, it will not be explained.
The collection continues to expand. The subjects, for the most part, do not.