Artist Joep van Lieshout (Atelier Van Lieshout) and project developer RED Company have joined forces to build a large-scale cultural cluster with residential units, offices and services in Rotterdam’s up and coming M4H port area. Their cooperation heralds a new model for urban renewal that does not automatically push out creatives once neighbourhoods upgrade.

BRUTUS combines culture, living and working in an area with 120 years of industrial history. At its heart lies a cultural cluster measuring at least 7,000 square metres (75,000 ft2). This will house a museum, exhibition spaces, a publicly accessible art depot, an art education unit, workshops, studios and working/living spaces for artists. The outdoor area will feature an open air cinema, a theatre and a sculpture garden.

Click here for the press release

Click here for the press folder

2 September 2020 – 1 September 2023

The artworks of “Welcome to Leiden ?!” explore the theme “borders” in the broadest sense of the word, with the human experience as the point of departure. What does a border do to people? And what does a border mean them? During ones walk through the Singelpark, the works present the viewer with a variety of boundaries: psychological and inner boundaries that limit us unnoticed, biological boundaries such as the natural size of a group, borders that lie outside our daily vision, such as those of Europe, the recognizable and threatening visual language of border surveillance, and the boundaries within systems and ideologies and how one can break out of them.

The theme “borders” also immediately remind one of the refugee crisis. Who do we admit, who do we exclude, and why? However, boundaries are also needed to be able to live in freedom: to think and do whatever we want. Freedom for one therefore simultaneously means a restriction for the other. It is within the field of tension between usefulness and necessity, that concept of the “Welcome to Leiden?!” exhibition finds its origin.

Atelier Van Lieshout artworks on view: Cage (2017).

https://www.singelpark.nl/kunst/

19 December 2020 – 6 January 2021

AVL Mundo and Atelier Van Lieshout bring light to these dark days with an Art Nativity Scene in and around the M4H area. A pilgrimage for people between the ages of 8 and 88 who, regardless of their beliefs or disbeliefs, who want to come together in solidarity or because they feel lonely and displaced. Of course, everything with due regard the latest corona measures.

The Art Nativity Scene at the Keileweg is a life-size spectacle, or a diorama, with revolving temple dancers, challenging Hanukkah candlesticks, spoiled godsons, rotating fertility priests, and of course babies as radiant centers.

Ongoing daily is the Christmas Tour Radio Play for the whole family. On December 23, a take-away Christmas dinner will be served for (ex) homeless people and others in vulnerable situations. On the weekends, with a hot chocolate in hand, come listen to the unlicensed Street Musicians that have problems earning money in these difficult times.

Under the adagio “burn a candle for yourself”, together we torch the misery of the past year in the fire pits in the Sculpture Park.

The activities around the KunstKerststal also ring the final bells for the last days of the outdoor exhibition Let’s Get Physical in the M4H area. In a solidarity setting, walk this beautiful route with over 30 statues. In the happy expectation that 2021 may be a better year and that we may leave 2020 behind us.

Entrance is free, registration is not necessary.

Sculpture park AVL Mundo
Keileweg 18, Rotterdam

Mon-Fri 09:00 – 17:00
Weekend 12:00 – 17:00
Except for 25th of December and the 1st of January

18 July 2020 – 3 January 2021

‘Let’s Get Physical’ is a dynamic exploration of the burgeoning industrial Merwe-Vierhaven area in the west of Rotterdam, highlighted through a selection of 30+ Atelier Van Lieshout sculptures at 13 locations. Get your free road map at AVL Mundo Sculpture Park which serves as the sculpture route’s home base. Other participating locations are: Weelde, Keilecafé, Keilepand, Keilewerf, Stichting Dakpark, The Lee Towers, CrossFit Nultien and several publicly accessible venues.

Atelier Van Lieshout artworks on display: Alcoholator (2004), Arschmänner (2004), Autocomposter (2003), AVL Man Waving (1999), BarRectum (2005), Big Boiler (2018), Buffel (2011), Darwin (2008), De Dokwerker (2019), Der Kuss (2008), Excrementus Megalomanus (2019), Family (2020), Fermenting Vessel with Man (2004), Food Reaktor (2013), Helpers (2014), Horn of Plenty (2008), Invisible Hand (2012), Kiss (2015), Laocoon (2003), Le Foot (2015), Lebensborn (2013), Milkman (2015), Panta Rhei (2011), Pantokrator (2015), Philosopher (2017), Power Hammer (2014), Statistocrat (2015), Steam Hammer House (2014), The Cube (2007), The Sower (2018), Tree of Life (2016), Utopia (2020), Vice (2014), Waterwagon (2007), Wellness Skull (2007) and Weltmeister (2010)

Link to press kit with additional texts and images

26 July 2020 – May 2021

From 26 July to 18 October 2020, MDD, Museum of Deinze and the Leie Region (Mudel) and Roger Raveel Museum, join forces to present the 7th edition of the Biennial of Painting. Under the title Binnenskamers (Inner Spaces) – a title chosen long before the corona crisis – the Biennial is an exciting opportunity to discover a wide selection of modern and recent paintings from Belgium and internationally. The works included in the Biennial depict an equally wide range of inner spaces, among them the studio, the domestic interior and the inner realm of the imagination. Yet the theme also speaks to the stunning natural landscape of the Leie region. As there can be no inside without outside, Biennial visitors can enjoy the works on display as well as the inspiring surroundings of Deinze, Deurle, Machelen-Zulte and Latem. AVL’s Hagioscoop is on view until May, 2021.

Atelier Van Lieshout artwork on display: Hagioscoop (2012)

3 September 2020 – 8 November 2020

We are all going to die. The end is near. Second by second The Pendulum reminds us of our mortality. The giant time piece is like a hibernating bear: beautiful and perhaps even endearing, but deadly nonetheless. Its sound is more a hypnotic pulse than a nervous ticking; every 15 minutes a hammer striking a gas cylinder sounds an industrial death knell.

The Pendulum consists of an elaborate system of cogs which is powered by two suspended pallets carrying cement bags that weigh some 1,000 kilos. The counterweights are attached to the roof of the exhibition space, making it part of the work and physically encapsulating visitors in time, the building becomes a part of the clock.

Atelier Van Lieshout artworks on view: Pendulum (2019), Le Balzac (2017), Calgon (2017), Daalderop (2017), Mensch (2017) and others.

Kunstraum Dornbirn,
Jahngasse 9, A – 6850 Dornbirn, Austria

Sneak preview: press here for a video of Pendulum (2019)

16 July 2020 – 21 January 2021

The What is Our Home? exhibition grew out of an interest in striking up a dialogue, in forging a connection and affinity between the collections of IVAM and of MAXXI, Rome. With this goal in mind, we have brought together a group of works from the collection of the Italian museum (Ilya & Emilia Kabakov, Francis Alys, Jana Sterbak, Mario Merz, Alfredo Jaar, Kara Walker, William Kentridge, Atelier Van Lieshout and Teddy Cruz) with some major works from the IVAM collection (Bruce Nauman, Gabriele Basilico and Richard Hamilton). Their common ground is a concern with the inhabited and social space, a questioning of the city, the home, the community, or the personal sanctuary.

The exhibition seeks to understand how spaces mark time and are linked to a place’s memory. We present a group of works and large installations that seem to be an accumulation of places with varying degrees of closeness and disconnectedness, and which draw attention to the fragmentation of the human experience, to the inability to comprehend the social whole and to the imperfection of knowledge.

In addition, What is Our Home? wishes to talk about those people who feel like strangers no matter where they are, as they come to feel that their existence unfolds, somewhat anxiously, in cities that they no longer recognize and in urban spaces in which they have no place or space. And so, in the exhibition we find a group of ideas and projects that understand architecture as a structure that condenses a physical world; as the desire to build a place (a haven, a sanctuary, a house, a home…) defined by the people that use it, as if it were a (more or less free) version of ourselves.

Atelier Van Lieshout artworks on view: The Globe (2007) and Slave City Urban Plan (2005).

IVAM
Guillem de Castro, 118
46003 Valencia, Spain

1 August 2020 – 23 August 2020

Rotterdam Ahoy and Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen developed an unique, corona-proof project. Ahoy makes its location available, Boijmans the artworks; together they make a special experience. More than forty works from the collection are displayed in the 10,000 m2 event hall; 750 visitors per day drive in electric cars through the Drive-thru Museum.

The Boijmans Ahoy Drive-Thru Museum has been created in response to the 1.5-metre social-distancing rule and highlights the current tension between man and nature. The world we have created it is under pressure, and nature is demanding more space. Despite its microscopic size, the virus has unleashed great chaos, bringing everything to a standstill and revealing our vulnerability and the limits of existence. We have fallen back upon our most basic needs and retreated into the groups in which we feel safest. Art can offer us comfort and help us to put things into perspective, and it can also show us the unpredictable and fickle nature of human existence. This exhibition explores the boundary between humanity and the forces of nature. You drive through the space, experiencing everything from the safe cocoon of your own car. Once inside the show there is only one direction and it is straight ahead.

The exhibition is based on an idea by Ted Noten. It features world-famous works from the collection of Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen and installations by contemporary artists that reflect on how people relate to their natural environment. Boijmans Ahoy Drive-Thru Museum brings together works by Ted Noten, Oskar Kokoschka, Bas Jan Ader, Melanie Smith, Paul McCarthy, Bruce Nauman, Ugo Rondinone, Cyprien Gaillard, Joep van Lieshout, Wieki Somers and Jim Shaw, and installations by Bas Princen, Trenton Doyle Hancock, Anselm Kiefer, Olaf Nicolai and Marijke van Warmerdam.

Atelier Van Lieshout artwork on display: Mercedes with 57mm Canon (1998) and Operation (2007).

6 June 2020 – 12 December 2020

The online exhibition Life During Wartime: art in the Age of Coronavirus humbly engages a select company of international artists to respond to the overwhelming realities of the crisis that has gripped the planet since March 5, the date the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic. The exhibition takes full advantage of one of the few outlets artists still have—the Internet—during a public health emergency recently exacerbated by the wanton murder of George Floyd by police officers in Minneapolis. It aims to mobilize sentiment, thought and activity around art and its enduring possibilities: its role as a conceptual catalyst, its ability to trigger ideas, stories, conversations, emotions, feelings and mental states. Separately and together, each artist contribution provides a picture of a planet in crisis, now further enraged and victimized by violence, but also images of hope and optimism in the face of a global emergency.

“Very Bad.
Tabula Rasa.
Much More Time.
Back to Basics.
Necessary Reset.”

– Joep van Lieshout

Link to the online exhibition

23 July 2020 – 24 January 2021

Under a title that evokes a kind of permanent summer, the exhibition at FARC Lorraine presents a reflection between the work of the artist Céline Condorelli (lives and works in London) and a selection of works from the collections of Frac Alsace, Frac Champagne-Ardenne, and Frac Lorraine.

Atelier Van Lieshout artworks on view: Autocraat (1998), Masterplan (1998), Commune Bed (1998, on image) and Untitled (1998).

3 April – 29 November 2020

What is real, and how are you sure it is so? Can you be confident in your perceptions when so many experiences are digital or influenced by the changing chemistry and architecture of your brain? Science Gallery Rotterdam at Erasmus MC invites you to engage with art projects that respond to this fertile terrain between the actual and the perceived.

Atelier Van Lieshout’s Food Processor (2015) is part of the group exhibition (UN)REAL. This work is a hybrid human-machine species, one united entity, that can take leftovers and process them with microbes and enzymes to produce new, recycled superfood. It is a technocratic, capitalist dream come true, and a triumph, in collaboration with science: the food of the future.

View the online exhibition via this link

18 June 2020 – 26 June 2020

Galería OMR virtually exhibits Atelier Van Lieshout’s The Burghers, 2013 during this year’s online edition of Art Basel. The sculpture symbolizes the ever-present human dilemma: the choice between the known and the unknown, between security and insecurity, between tradition and progress. The figures represent the different emotions that people go through in a time of conflict: heroism, fear, rebellion, survival, escape, loneliness – a mass of humans, insecure, doubtful and chaotic.

Press here for Galería OMR’s online viewing room

Galerie Krinzinger virtually exhibits Atelier Van Lieshout’s Venus, 2010. The sculpture is inspired by the prehistorical Venus sculpture. This ancient goddess and mother figure refers to idolatry, fertility and primitive society in which women played a considerably more important if not dominant role.

Press here for Galerie Krinzinger’s viewing room

4 October 2019 – 1 July 2020

During COVID-19 it’s still possible to visit ‘Uomo Analyticus’ under strict conditions. More information about the exhibition and the current guidelines via this link.

‘Uomo Analyticus’ can both mean ‘the analyzing human’ and ‘a human analyzed’. How do we live? How are we made? How do we process and get processed? This exhibition focusses on the core theme of Atelier Van Lieshout’s practice: dissecting systems, be it society as a whole or the human body. Atelier Van Lieshout looks at the human body as the ultimate system and an everlasting source of inspiration.

Uomo Analyticus is organised by Foundation AVL Mundo in collaboration with Science Gallery Rotterdam.

AVL Mundo Sculpture Park
Keileweg 18, Rotterdam (NL)
Mon – Fri, 09:00 – 17:00
Free entrance

29 February 2020 – 6 June 2020

Reality Is Not What It Seems at Galerie Jousse Entreprise is an exhibition dealing with drawing, in its broadest sense, somewhere between frottage, collage, sewing on paper, printing, and graphic design. Fresh from the studio, sketches illustrate artistic lines of thinking and transport viewers into the intimacy of creation. A form of de- compartmentalization that is also at work in these video artists who, unusually, appropriate the paper medium to transcribe inner visions, and study the boundaries of our perception of the world. All so many approaches like sidesteps opening up to new perspectives, towards a reality which is not what it seems.

Atelier Van Lieshout artworks on display: Untitled (2002), Sportopia (2002), The Womb (2003) and Masterplan (1998).

More info here

11 December 2019 – 31 December 2020

We live in a state of extremes. Extreme weather, as a result of climate change, is both scorching and inundating the planet with record temperatures, unprecedented wildfires and ever more frequent and severe droughts, storms and floods. Meanwhile, extreme ideologies and political positions are being amplified by the media’s news cycles and the echo chamber of the Internet, further polarizing societies already inflamed by extreme, and growing, inequality and resentments. Extremes breed more extremes, creating self-reinforcing cycles of pushback and backlash, and fueling spiraling feedback loops of increasing intensity.

Atelier Van Lieshout artworks on display: Birds (on image, 2017), Process 50 ton 50 mm (2016), Hydroform gastank 275 BAR (2017), The End of Everything (2017, video)

More info via this link

17 April 2020 – 8 May 2020

Time is money. Time is fleeting. Time is precious. Time heals. Time is of the essence. Time is an illusion. We make time. We take time. We spend time. We race against time. We fight time. We try to control it – speeding it up, slowing it down. It’s just a matter of time.

The Time is Now is an online group exhibition curated by Carpenters Workshop Gallery. Atelier Van Lieshout’s works speak to the necessity or “time” for change, symbolizing a hope for a revolution of consciousness and the awakening of more mindful beings.  AVL continually investigates the cycles of life that are born through the passage of time and the end or destruction of systems; while his clock sculpture Pendulum is designed to destroy and change so as to make way for the potential of new beginnings, his scepter-like Walking Stick 5 Hourglass reflects on the path to the future. Another AVL artwork on display: Pipe Bomb Clock (2019).

Press here for a link to the online exhibition

Temporarily closed until further notice to help contain the spread of Coronavirus (COVID-19)

4 March 2020 – 25 April 2020

The tropes and aesthetics of Sergio Leone’s film The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966) have inspired much of the identity Joep Van Lieshout invented for his art practice. From frontier independence and a Darwinian survival-of-the-fittest, to heightened gender roles and violent tonal shifts — the film has become an apt lens through which to view the perspectives he sculpts. Atelier Van Lieshout’s solo exhibition is titled The Good, The Bad and The Ugly and opens Wednesday March 4th at Carpenters Workshop Gallery New York.

Artworks on display:  Minimal Kiss Lamp, Bambino Lamp, Humanoid, Domestikator Lamp, Jewel, Venus Lamp, Technocrat Bronze Coffee Table, Embrace, Deer Lamp and others. Full works list here.

Carpenters Workshop Gallery
693 Fifth Avenue, New York (USA)

30 November 2019 – 24 May 2020

On the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the Falckenberg Collection, the Deichtorhallen Hamburg is presenting a comprehensive exhibition from 30 November 2019 to 24 May 2020 which will focus on installations and sculptures from the collection. The exhibition features some100 works by over 60 internationally renowned artists.

Atelier Van Lieshout artwork on display: Hanging Michelangelo (2004).

Temporarily closed until further notice to help contain the spread of Coronavirus (COVID-19)

6 February 2020 – 8 April 2020

Recover/Uncover examines the convention of taxonomy as an organizational exercise that reveals its own ambiguities. With newly commissioned, unique and limited-edition pieces by designers and artists whose inquiries defy strict categorization, MASA Galeria introduces for consideration a set of binaries other than purpose and expression, celebrating contradiction as a reflection of the ongoing process of becoming and self-definition. The pieces exist along a spectrum of indeterminates rather than at a stasis, defying strict archetypes and presenting objects as tools for living, contemplation and, most of all, reconciliation.

Atelier Van Lieshout artworks on display: Black Funnelman (2006) and Party Island (Les Brutalist Series, 2005).

12 October 2019 – 12 February 2020

Atelier Van Lieshout exhibits The Mechanical Turks (2015) at the Anren Biennale, China. The Biennial entitled, A Confrontation of Ideals is the second to take place in the historic city of Chengdu in Sichuan province, examining questions concerning humane, civilized community while sharing artists’ thoughts and efforts to deal with the complex realities of the world. The two automaton heads in The Mechanical Turks argue with one another in an accompanying audio work about whether to become Modernists or Primitivists. 

Anren Biennale
Anren Szechuan, Chengdu, China

7 February 2020 – 9 February 2020

During Art Rotterdam, AVL opens its doors with an exhibition of recent and older works of Atelier Van Lieshout at Joep van Lieshout’s private exhibition space.

Keileweg 26, Rotterdam
Fri – Sun, 11:00 – 19:00 hrs
Free entrance

Artworks on display: Wise Guy (2019), Mother Earth Constructivist (2015, on image), Leemwerker (2016), Wall Decoration (2008), Bad Man series (2002), Boat (1983), The Philosopher (2017), Le Corbafrique (2011) and others.

This Art Rotterdam Atelier Van Lieshout’s Pendulum (2019) is on display as well. It is part of The Performance Show. More details and tickets via this link.

30 November 2019 – 11 January 2020

Home… So many other words spring from this one. At once abode, refuge, shelter, a home exists in our own home, and elsewhere: in a café, a town or city, or a bookshop. But what is this place, really? By dint of making a home from what is not one, what actually hallmarks it vanishes. This is what is proposed by the show’s title, inspired by the famous line of Gertrude Stein taken from her poem Sacred Emily*, written in 1913.
* Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose.

Atelier Van Lieshout artworks on display: Table wih Mexican Crockery + 8 Shaker Chairs (Sweet), 2006 (on image), Fauteuil Le Corbafrique, 2009, Table (polyester), 1996.

More info via this link

21 November 2019 until 13 December 2019

Various jewellery designs of Atelier Van Lieshout are part of ‘A Decade of Wearable Art’. This exhibition is featuring an eclectic and broad range of wearable art collaborations from the past ten years at the Elisabetta Cipriani Gallery.

The jewellery pieces in collaboration with Cipriani are typical for Atelier Van Lieshout’s deliberate contradictions between form and function. Five Pointed Golden Knuckle, (2010) is on display and can be worn as a ring, but also can be used, if the situation demands, as a weapon. Other AVL jewellery, Ear Hangers (2009), Oval Family (2010) and Happy Cufflinks (2009), are part of the exhibition as well.

Elisabetta Cipriani Gallery, London (UK)
Monday to Friday (10am-6pm)⠀⠀

28 October 2019 until 20 December 2019

Womb (2005), is now settled in the USA as it will be shown in a group exhibition at Harvard Graduate School of Design. This group exhibition, “Love in a Mist: The Politics of Fertility”, is exploring several narratives on the spaces and politics of fertility. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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Womb is a stylized representation of the interior of the female body, almost a perfect anatomical rendition of one of the organs that keeps us going.⠀⠀⠀

Harvard Graduate School of Design
Cambridge (USA)⠀⠀⠀⠀