ABOUT
Stefan Knuist makes visible what usually lies beneath the surface: the rapid succession of feelings, the layered nature of thought, and the question of how direction can emerge within both. Borderlines Labyrinth is a multi-year project that renders this inner world on paper and canvas, housed in hand-built wooden frames. Each work functions as a conversation in which emotion, line, color, and wood answer one another.
His path to the studio grew out of a period of deep personal reflection, emotional struggle, and therapy. From this experience, Borderlines Labyrinth took shape as a creative exploration of inner unrest, identity, and the search for peace within complexity. The project is not about a label or diagnosis, but about examining the roots of unease, self-criticism, and disconnection, and slowly finding a new perspective through the making process. Step by step, art became a way to better understand himself and to create space for calm, clarity, and growth.
Borderlines Labyrinth traces a way out of that maze toward a labyrinth understood as architecture, with a single path leading from the outer edge to the center. The process began with drawing as a means of processing and grew into a daily practice: first collages and sketches, then color, charcoal, gold leaf, paint and so on. In that routine he found steadiness, language, and direction.
Borderlines Labyrinth explores coherence without denying complexity and uses simplification where it brings clarity. Emotions can exist side by side; none has to rule. In close-up one feeling appears distinctly; zoomed out, a wider web of feelings and thoughts comes into view, one that moves with it. That web is the subject
Building his own frames followed naturally: the framing had to strengthen the story, not merely surround it. From there a second craft emerged, working with oak, wenge, mahogany, walnut, beech, and meranti, with finishes that let the grain speak rather than hide it.
The practice of making brings calm, concentration, and focused attention. For the viewer, the work is meant to offer space to recognize one’s own layers without the need to resolve anything on the spot. The working premise is simple: change does not require erasing; it requires seeing. Recognition is often the first shift.
Variété.ist stands for creating without fixed boundaries, with room for surprise. Historically, variété is the theatrical form where short acts follow one another; music, cabaret, acrobatics, poetry, sometimes the intimate alongside the exuberant. Tempo, tone, and discipline keep shifting. In that sense, variété is not only a genre but a way of composing: building coherence by arranging contrasts with care.
Variété.ist grows from that fascination and translates it into a contemporary practice that leads through crisp, recognizable moments that together carry one story. Not a single style that rules everything, but a chain of deliberate links, where rhythm and transition drive the work.
The dot in the name is a statement. .ist is the mark of someone who practices this stance by choice: a variété.ist who embraces multiplicity, lets opposites collaborate, and protects the freedom to begin again and again. Not a random mix, but a purposeful play with tension, timing, and measure.
Under this vision emerges the first art project, Borderlines Labyrinth. The project unfolds in series that each mark a phase; steps in a trajectory where emotions and thoughts coexist, influence one another, and remain legible. Within Borderlines Labyrinth the movement is visible: new techniques, shifting rhythms, evolving material choices; with each step a next direction takes shape.
Before the Studio:
Professional Background
Before his studio practice, Stefan Knuist spent seventeen years in fashion and events, including seven years as Brand Manager Netherlands at Carhartt WIP and earlier at Modefabriek, Denim Days, G-Star RAW, Atelier Ladurance, Accent Circonflex, Full Circle and an own company in marketing. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration from Erasmus University Rotterdam.