It’s a Sickness

24 April - 6 June, 2026.

Part of the group exhibition Hot Social Brutal at Het Resort, VVK, Groningen, The Netherlands.

"It's a sickness," one of the older club members said, when asked about football as a hobby.

What William Ludwig Lutgens immediately noticed during his first visit to the football club was the ritual around alcohol, part of a larger, almost theatrical culture surrounding the social life of the game. In the storage room are two 2,000-liter Heineken kegs, refilled every few weeks — emphasizing the rhythm and repetition of these collective habits. A pitchside board reads: "No 18, no alcohol." At first glance it appears to be a warning for young people. On the reverse side, however, a Heineken 0.0% advertisement reveals the contradictions within this culture, where ritual, social bonding, and commerce intersect.

Comos, the Greek god of youth and the afterparty, became for Lutgens the god of football's 'third half'. From this figure, he developed a series of characters that enter the field and engage with the game and its traces. Five figures, a supporter, a Fritz Korbach-like coach, a god, a city monument, and a referee, form a football folklore universe. They stand, lean, crouch or lie down, offering themselves as obstacles to practice free kicks against. These weathered, imperfect figures reflect lives shaped by play, habit, and exposure to the game's social environment.

At the opening of the exhibition, Lutgens activated the work through a live music performance in which he embodied a Pan-like hybrid figure — suspended between play and excess — exaggerating the 'third half' into an absurd form.

With this work, Lutgens explores the absurdity, repetition, and rituals of football culture, with particular attention to the 'third half' and how it shapes those who move, watch, and linger within the club space.

by Elles Hesseling

Photography by Hanne van der Velde