From the 8^th of June until mid-October, Atelier Van Lieshout is part of the exhibition Vrijplaats bij MIJ at Museum IJsselstein (NL). The museum hosts a group show with a different societal focus every year. This year’s exhibition is about the concept of freedom, the longing for freedom and places where rules are practically non-existent.

The works by Atelier Van Lieshout come from multiple series and eras: from the utopian and dystopian communities ‘AVL- Ville’ and ‘Slave City’, to the most recent project ‘CryptoFuturism’. The selection of works represent the different ways how Atelier Van Lieshout views free states and how we can reach better futures.

The artwork Cage (2017) is part of the exhibition and represents a deconstructed, distorted cage; a disfigured prison that symbolizes the human longing for freedom. Other artworks on display are: Arschmänner (2004), Walking Stick Hourglass (2018), AVL M80 Mortar (1999)

Participating artists at Vrijplaats bij MIJ: Atelier Van Lieshout, Frank Koolen & Kasper Jacobs, Johan Grimonprez, Hito Steyerl, Rob Voerman, Leonard van Munster, David Bernstein, Manon van Hoeckel, Ursula Jernberg, Merapi Obermayer, Su Tomesen, Rogeria Burgers, Henk Wijnen, sven signe den hartogh, Jonas Wijtenburg en Fedor van Rossem.

For more information: www.museumijsselstein.nl (website in Dutch)

25 May 2019 – May 2021

Blast Furnace is a 40-foot-tall maze-like structure comprised of pipes, conveyor elevators, staircases, and mezzanines. Although industrial in form and purpose, the sculpture also contains domestic elements as a kitchen, sleeping quarters, and toilets, all fabricated by Atelier Van Lieshout. In the fictional world of the piece, a “New Tribe” of metal workers, driven by their desire to return to industry, simple products, social cohesion, and the origins of our wealth, design and culture, have created a settlement inside Blast Furnace. Setting the stage for the synthesis of man and machine, this tribe feeds off the heat, waste, and noise of their industrial utopia.

Blast Furnace stems from AVL’s project New Tribal Labyrinth, which reflects on society’s dependence on a complex, globalized economy. The project focuses on the pillars of an alternative society inhabited by imaginary tribes: farming, industry and ritual objects.

Art OMI
1405 County Route 22
Ghent, NY 12075

22 March 2019 – 18 April 2019

With RENEGADE Van Lieshout defines art on his own terms. He challenges the market while giving it what it wants: Van Lieshout, the artist sometimes referred to as designer, will make or take an artwork and turn it into design by just adding a lampshade. Like one of the lamps in the exhibition reads: fuck you very much. With incredible speed Atelier Van Lieshout sculpts a multitude of lamps at a time, thereby quickly accumulating an amount that can spread through the art world like a virus. By adding a lampshade, Van Lieshout presents this new group of works to the public as if it were quickly assembled DIY furniture: large quantities, functional and very accessible.

RENEGADE consists of an arrangement of differently sized lamps which are created, assembled, put together and produced from found objects and simple materials. Some of the lamps even refer back to Van Lieshout’s own historic work exhibited in museums: balaclava masks dangle from metal lampshades; a bust with a gas mask strapped to its head embellishes the lamp pole of a floor lamp; a single, red forlorn lightbulb dimly illuminates the roughly cut out wooden words “GIRLS-GIRLS-GIRLS”; tall, sausage-like organic-looking objects taper into a single burning lightbulb, whereas two beer crates -one of Van Lieshout’s defining iconic sculptures in combination with concrete slabs- build the solid base for a sturdy lamp with a steel shade.

Gió Marconi Gallery
via Tadino 20
I-20124 Milano Italy

17 May 2019 – 15 September 2019

The sixth edition of ARTZUID took place from May 17th till September 15th 2019. The Amsterdam Sculpture Biennial presented an exhibition to experience featuring over 80 figurative sculptures and spatial art installations. The heart of the exhibition lies in Berlage’s monumental Plan Zuid area with its leafy avenues Apollolaan and Minervalaan. This green space served as a backdrop for the theatrical grouping of modern and contemporary figurative sculptures which were interspersed with interactive spatial installations. ARTZUID 2019 included an extensive peripheral programme of activities including artist talks, an educational programme and art walks. Every edition the free exhibition is open 24/7.

19 June 2019  – 24 August 2019

Carpenters Workshop Gallery, Paris, France

For Atelier Van Lieshout’s largest-scale exhibition of work in the United States, The CryptoFuturist and The New Tribal Labyrinth, AVL brings together two ongoing bodies of work, among others, that give the exhibition its name. They transform Pioneer Works into an immersive installation of sculptures and industrial machines. Central to the artist’s New Tribal Labyrinth series is Blast Furnace (2013), an imposing, labyrinthine structure referencing the furnaces traditionally used to produce steel. The sculpture also contains domestic elements such as a kitchen, sleeping quarters, and toilets, an environment inhabited by an imaginary tribe of metalworkers, a “New Tribe” with a visceral desire to return to the beginning of industry, the origins of our culture, wealth, materials, and products. Setting the stage for the synthesis of man and machine, this tribe feeds off the heat, waste, and noise of their industrial utopia. Other works in this series literalize the union of the human and industrial through sculptural representations of sperm and reproductive organs doubling as lamps and furniture. They posit the human body as itself a kind of machine, endlessly procreating. The CryptoFuturist and The New Tribal Labyrinth is curated by Gabriel Florenz and Natalie Kovacs and is to be visited from March 1st until April 14th 2019 at Pioneer Works, New York (USA).

22 December 2018 – 17 February 2019

Atelier Van Lieshout artworks on display: Pipebomb (2002), Fog Horn (2017), Pipe Bomb Clock Small, Medium, Large (2018), Walking Stick #5 (2018), Back To The Future Clock (2018), Hourglass Large (2018), Willem de Zwijger (2018), Naar de Kloten Klok (2018), Gallow Clock (2018), Pendulum (2018).

Willem Twee, Den Bosch, The Netherlands

AVL Mundo opens its doors during ART Rotterdam 2019 for BIG AND PLENTY, a group exhibition with plenty of big artworks from various artists. The Atelier Van Lieshout workshop will be open for visitors where artists Neo Matloga and Wouter Paijmans will show the works that they made during their residency at AVL Mundo. Sculptures of Atelier Van Lieshout will be on display at the studio and at Joep van Lieshout’s private exhibition space. Other participating artists are Fraser Stewart, Susan Collis, Ade Darmawan, Vincent Ceraudo, Herman Nitsch, Ricardo Van Eyk and Faysal Mroueh.

Last but not least, the work The right to right/wrong from Libia Castro and Ólafur Ólafsson will be permanently installed on the silo of the AVL Mundo premises, to be seen from the sculpture garden.

Thursday 7 Feb – Sunday 10 Feb: 12hrs – 18hrs
Keileweg 18 & 26, free of charge

15 September 2018 – 27 October 2018

HE.RO presents Market Forces, a group show of work that variously critiques and co-opts the techniques of mass-markets, often succeeding in both at once.

The exhibition comprises both historical and recent work, mapping out creative responses to the steady intensification of consumer culture engendered by the dominance of neoliberalism from the 1980’s onwards.

Atelier Van Lieshout artworks on view: Artist, Artist Producing and Curator (2018) and Invisible Hand (2012)

Atelier Van Lieshout, Mike Bouchet, Libia Castro & Ólafur Ólafsson and Riley Harmon contribute to the exhibition What’s wrong with this picture?. This exhibition and its complementary programme, organised by AVL Mundo, will be open from Friday to Sunday from the 7th until the 23rd of September.

What’s wrong with this picture? confronts the public with works that contain dark humour, ask urgent questions and present a bleak view on reality. Atelier Van Lieshout shows works from the SlaveCity project about perceived and mouldable social normalcy, as they reconsider the concept of time, the prospects for society and the role of mankind therein. Visitors are forced to think about what we take for granted and to ask themselves, “What’s wrong with this picture?”

25 April 2018 – 2 December 2018

Ferrotopia, the latest art installation by Atelier Van Lieshout, opening at the NDSM-werf on Wednesday 25th April at 19:00h, is an ode to steel and bygone industries that explores new forms of manufacturing in a “circular economy”. 

Ferrotopia is a Gesamkunstwerk – a large-scale public project made up of four buildings: Domestikator, Drop Hammer House, Happy Industry and Refectory. Its totem is the iconic Domestikator, a monumental structure that depicts humankind’s domination of nature. Domestikator drew international attention as a hub for the Ruhr Triennial, but its fame exploded with the controversy it caused when the work was invited to be exhibited outside the Louvre, was censored and then adopted by the Centre Pompidou. The work was retrofitted as a pavilion for freedom of expression, hosting a series of screenings, discussions and international debate. In Amsterdam, Domestikator will be joined by the atmospheric Refectory, the Happy Industry Foundry – a functioning metal workshop, and the purpose-built Drop Hammer House, created specifically for the NDSM to represent destruction, recycling and production in a circular economy.

On the 1st February, the Carpenters Workshop Gallery in London will launch a solo-exhibition with functional sculptures by Atelier Van Lieshout. These works, a series of various lamps, are part of the CryptoFuturism series.

“Lust for Life Lamps is about enjoying life and embracing every part of it. Whether it is life, death, dancing, getting old, contemplating or reproducing, all of those things are essential parts of human life. And of course, it is about having lust all your life.”

– Joep van Lieshout

Atelier Van Lieshout’s first video work Cage is currently on display as part of the exhibition PUNK+DANS+KUNST (Punk, dance and art) at SCHUNCK*. The exhibition presents the subversive creativity and the physical, ironic language used in Hail reflected in the work of contemporaries of Michael Clark and Charles Atlas’s day, as well as among modern-day artists active in visual art and dance, music and pop culture, with their rebellious expressions. Some of the angry movements are timeless. Guest curator and choreographer Karin Post has put together a modern-day collage of movement, image and sound, which traces the influence of punk sub-culture and its ‘angry movements’ in dance and visual art.

Atelier Van Lieshout is proud to be part of the opening exhibition of the new Centro Arte e Scienze Golinelli in Bologna, Italy. The exhibition, with the title Imprevedibili, essere pronti per il futuro senza sapere come sara (Unforeseable, being ready for the future without knowing what it will be like), shows a selection of works which all reflect on a possible future, including Atelier van Lieshout’s Cow of the Future and Food Reaktor.

For aditional information, please see the website of the Fondazione Golinelli

Atelier Van Lieshout, Carpenters Workshop Gallery and FIAC are proud to present Domestikator at the Centre Pompidou!

Please join us for the opening event on Thursday the 19th October:

6PM – 9PM: reception and cocktail
7 PM: artist talk by Joep van Lieshout
9PM – 11PM: Cocktail reception at Carpenters Workshop Gallery, 54 rue de la Verrerie 75004

The artwork will host an ongoing series of impromptu discussions, performances and screenings. This Salon will be inaugurated with a discussion between friends and artists Xavier Veilhan and Joep van Lieshout, on Thursday 19th October at 11 AM

After the Musée du Louvre decided the sculpture was too provocative for the Jardin de Tuilleries, the artwork will now be installed at the square next to the Fontaine Stravinsky.

Joep van Lieshout: “I’m very pleased that the Centre Pompidou was able to see beyond the sensationalized interpretations of this work, and offered to present it during FIAC. By exhibiting this work, the institution is not only allowing the public to properly experience its artistic and intrinsic values, but it also opens up a broader discussion about the current challenges and complexities in the relationships between artists, institutions, public, and press – and their subsequent impact on artistic freedom.
Domestikator was always intended to be a catalyst for thought, as it addresses the very serious issue of how humans employ technology – with ingenuity, creativity, sophistication and persistence – to change the world into a “better” place, often domesticating it in the process. In order to push the boundaries of human experience and longevity, we have developed new technologies, like artificial intelligence, genetic manipulation, robotics and industrial farming, which push our ethical borders, without any real understanding of the long term consequences.
I am pleased that visitors to the Pompidou will have the opportunity to experience this work and hope that it generates questions and dialogue around the complexity of the issue of domestication – particularly its inherent hypocrisy, and the disconcerting fact that we are still without any real policy or regulation to govern this increasingly intrepid behavior.
Now, in addition to these meanings, the installation has inadvertently become a catalyst for a conversation about the freedom of expression, which is an urgent topic today. I’d like to express my sincerest gratitude to FIAC, Centre Pompidou, Carpenter’s Workshop Gallery, the city of Paris and my studio team for making this installation possible, and to the public who took to various platforms to voice their opposition to its censorship. I’m truly grateful for everyone’s support.”

A public program will take place around the Domestikator, please check this site or facebook for regular updates!

A solo exhibition by Joep van Lieshout, Furnification features the results of the artist’s recent sculptural experiments that that form part of the series, CryptoFururism. By revisiting the Italian Futurists, the series explores resonances with emerging fascist tendencies today, revealing the interplay between utopia and destruction. In Furnification, van Lieshout not only pushes the limits of materials, but also questions civilization itself.

More information can be found on the gallery website

On August 27, 2017 the first edition of ART Break will take place. This festival will transform the beach of Hoek van Holland into a celebration of art and coast. With ART Break Hoek van Holland finally has its own festival. From an art installation, classical music to a live painting performance and a treasure hunt through the Atlantik Wall, ART Break is for everyone!

The initiators of the festival, the entrepreneurs of the Rechtestraat, want to show how special Hoek van Holland is and how much culture this beach town has to offer. ‘’Hoek van Holland has six museums and is a place where a lot of Rotterdam-based artist take their summer break, but a lot of people aren’t aware of this’’, says Freek Ruigrok of DeSurfschool.nl, one of the entrepreneurs.

The eye catcher of ART Break will be Atelier Van Lieshout’s Bikinibar laying on the beach! The Bikinibar was created in 2006 as a place where people can withdraw from the busy beach life or bad weather. But it is only now that she can finally lay on the destination where she was intended for: the white sands of Hoek van Holland.

The festival takes place on Sunday the 27th of August 2017 and starts at 10 in the morning until 6 in the evening. The programme offers a wide range of activities for visitors of all ages such as surfing lessons for children, a hip-hop workshop, but also various concerts and a live painting performance by Solko Schalm, the unofficial port painter of Rotterdam. The festival can be visited free of charge. Hope to see you there!

Sunday August 27
10 am – 6 pm
Hoek van Holland – Rechtestraat
Free entry

July 14 will see the opening of Façade 2017, where you can see Cage (2017) by Atelier Van Lieshout. Huis presents the audience with a deconstructed, distorted cage; a disfigured prison that symbolizes the human longing for freedom.

In addition, Atelier van Lieshout captured the deconstructive process of Huis in collaboration with filmmaker Sonia Herman Dolz. The straight-edged cage was pushed apart with the use of heavy, self-made machines – i.e. a large drop hammer and hydraulic press with pressure. This film will be on display at CBK Zeeland, Middelburg.

Façade 2017 will run from July 14th until November 5^th 2017

For more information about the locations and other artworks on display please see the CBK Zeeland website:
http://www.facade2017.nl/

19 May 2017 – 17 September 2017

Visitors and residents of Amsterdam are once again welcome to visit ARTZUID, this time for it’s 5^th edition. Presented as a 5km art route you are guided past 60 monumental art works from Dutch and International abstract artists. The outdoor exhibition is being brought to you by Rudi Fuchs, art historian and former director of the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam.

With a duration of 4 months and free entry, visitors can also partake in one of the daily guided tours or guest lectures in the surrounding hotels and museums.

For more information and locations please visit the ARTZUID website.

The 22nd of April 2017 will see the opening of Poly Pluto Pluri at Galería OMR, the first solo exhibition of Atelier Van Lieshout in Mexico.

–        Poly derives from πολύς, ancient Greek for many, much

–        Pluto derives from πλουτος, ancient Greek for wealth

–        Pluri means several, many in Latin

Roughly translated as ´more more more´, Poly Pluto Pluri presents a selection of the work of Atelier Van Lieshout, offering an overview of artist Joep van Lieshout´s practice from the early 1990’s until the present day. Fuelled by Van Lieshout´s fascination with ´man and machine´, Poly Pluto Pluri charts the development of new technologies congruent to the advancement of humanity, with all of its successes and more notably, its failures.

We’re happy to announce that the artwork Pulse has been slected for the manifestation Licht 2017 in Graz, Austria. The work will be on display on the Kapistran-Pieller-Platz, opposite to the Kunsthaus Graz, from the 21st of April until the 4th of June.

Pulse is an interactive installation which aims to engage the inhabitants of Graz and to be at the heart of the community, expressing the pulse, the life of the city. The artwork is as a beacon, sending out lightsignals. These lightsignals will ‘beat’ to the same ‘rhytym’ as the pulse of a human heart. Every time a child is born in the Graz – which is approximately 11 times a day – the pulse and the intensity of the light will become stronger.
With this artwork, Atelier Van Lieshout wants to create a poetic collective moment for the citizens of Graz. Every time Pulse’s light intensifies, the artwork will celebrate the beginning of a human life, a new member of the community added. The artwork will enhance the existing sense of community, both by creating a collective experience and by serving as a physical landmark.

For more information about the work and the manifestation Licht 2017, please check the website of the KIÖR – Kunst in Offentlichen Raum Steiermark

We’re happy to announce our participation in the group show ‘Three Positions. Six Directions. Chapter 1: The Brutalist Ideal’, at Berlin’s König Galerie!

This show presents both impressions from and reactions to the architecture, the history, and the repurposing of the St Agnes church, which is currently in use as König Galerie’s main exhibition space – for an impression please check the gallery website

St. Agnes is a prime example of Brutalist architecture. More than style or fashion, Brutalism was a mentality and even a philosophy that inspired the simplicity, physical and ethical gravity, and economy that the church building embodies. It is with these same reductive ideas that the artworks presented in the show were born. Brutalism’s efficiency is reflected, for instance, in the artworks from Atelier Van Lieshout’s Slave City series, which extends these principles to a societal perspective. Added to this are recent works from the series Cryptofuturism, in which Atelier Van Lieshout researches the origin of matter, material and form.

The exhibition opens on Friday 20 January and runs until 12 February, at König Galerie, Alexandrinenstrasse 118 – 121, Berlin, Germany.