The Belgian artist and renowned architect Stefan Schöning astonishes yet again with a beautifully abstract, balanced work of art. The idea for Close encounters, a piece in mouth blown glass, arose at the beginning of the covid-19 pandemic. Governments took measures that made us feel safe, but also quite lonely and estranged from one another. The desire to be close to his loved ones was what drove Schöning to design Close encounters. Rather than to portray distance, the artist decided to concretise the opposite: closeness.