I Am Not An Artist, Brutus, Rotterdam (NL)
News
5 October 2024 – 15 December 2024
Non-functionality, originality and authenticity may be considered the three pillars of art, which are stripped away by Joep van Lieshout to undermine the myth of the artistic genius. For the first time in over 30 years, Untitled (1987-1988) beer crate sculptures and Soft-Edge Furniture (countless open editions from 1988-1993) will be exhibited in I Am Not An Artist, presented by Brutus Base. These works represent a gateway into modularity, a prelude to the work that turned Joep van Lieshout into Atelier Van Lieshout.
At Brutus, 3640 beer crates and over 600 concrete slabs fill the Kathedraal, while a remake of Van Lieshout’s 1987 computer program Unlimited Sculptures spews out billions and trillions of beer crate combinations. In ‘Disco Inferno’, we will encounter a ‘soft edge takeover’ with an almost innumerable number of sinks, tables, cabinets, toilets, desks and other objects.
This exhibition represents an even more pivotal point in Joep van Lieshout’s 40-year career, as the artist continues to morph the boundaries and interpretations of art, ethics, progress, utopia and dystopia.
AVL kindly thanks Bierbrouwerij AB InBev for collaborating on this exhibition.
Agenda
Current exhibition(s):
Blast Furnace, ART OMI, Ghent NY (USA)
25 May 2019 – Summer 2025
Roof Installation, ROOF-A, Rotterdam (NL)
04 November 2021 – 01 January 2025
50 jaar Ruigoord, Ruigoord, Amsterdam (NL)
21 July 2023 – Summer 2026
Successor, Beeldengallerij Haarlem, Haarlem (NL)
1 October 2023 – September 2025
We Will Survive – The Preppers Movement, mudac, Lausanne (CH)
13 September 2024 – 2 February 2025
I Am Not An Artist, Brutus, Rotterdam (NL)
5 October 2024 – 15 December 2024
About Epic Myths, Nosbaum Reding, Bruxelles (BE)
14 November 2024 – 11 January 2025
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The Engineer's Bedroom, Brutus, Rotterdam (NL)
News
‘Disco Inferno’ is a never-ending Gesamtkunstwerk that is constantly evolving: its latest development is The Engineer’s Bedroom or ‘Joep’s underbelly’ which will open to the public June 23rd at Brutus.
This addition to the installation is where the engineer of ‘Disco Inferno’ lives in his work, creates his inventions and sits at his drawing board and workshop to build his dreams. This ‘‘underbelly’’ is equipped with brand new, cheap tools, marching soldiers from China and a state-of-the-art laboratory fully equipped to grow medicinal mushrooms, to create tinctures, pills and healing ointments. This is the engineers sacred dream space that includes a video-cage-bed with images of his demolition activities. This ‘‘underbelly’’ may be seen as a portrait of the artist’s.
To learn more about ‘Disco Inferno’ check out Hans den Hartog Jager’s article in the NRC or the Brutus website.
Opening hours
Thursday – Sunday: 12:00h – 18:00h
‘The Time is Now’, Carpenters Workshop Gallery, Online exhibition
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
‘The Good, The Bad and The Ugly’, CWG, New York (USA)
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)
‘Falckenberg Collection’, Deichtorhallen, Hamburg (DE)
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).
‘Recover/Uncover’, Masa Galeria, Mexico City (MX)
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).
A Confrontation of Ideals’, Anren Biennale, Anren (CN)
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
‘Atelier Van Lieshout’, AVL Mundo, Art Rotterdam (NL)
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.
‘Home is a home is a home is a home’, Jousse Entreprise, Paris (FR)
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
‘A Decade of Wearable Art’, Elisabetta Cipriani Gallery, London (UK)
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)⠀⠀
‘Love in a Mist’, Harvard Graduate School of Design, Cambridge (USA)
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)⠀⠀⠀⠀
‘In the Age of Post-Drought’, Transnatural, DDW (NL)
19 October 2019 – 27 October 2019
Atelier Van Lieshout exhibits Excrementus Megalomanus (2019) at the Dutch Design Week, Eindhoven. The In The Age of Post-Drought exhibition is dedicated to the global water-related challenges. Due to climate change and the rapid world population growth, water scarcity is grown to be on of the biggest threats facing life on earth in the 21st century. Therefore, the composttoilet is a very low-tech yet very efficient way of recycling human waste.
Hallen (north entrance)
Dutch Design Week, Eindhoven (NL)
‘Dark Fantasy’, Carpenters Workshop Gallery, Los Angeles (USA)
11 October 2019 – 16 November 2019
Dark Fantasy guides the viewer through a whimsical world of the fantastic and the obscure, questioning the constraints of reality and what it means to dream. The group exhibition explores over a decade of functional art from 24 artists from Carpenters Workshop Gallery’s program, creating a dialogue between space, time and contemporary archeology.
Atelier Van Lieshout artworks on display: Reclining Figure (2019), Deer Lamp (2017), Model The Burghers (2016), Bambino Lamp (2014), Embrace (2015)
UTA Artist Space, 403 Foothill Rd.
Beverly Hills, CA 90210
‘House of Transition’, Fokus Favoriten, Vienna (AT)
20 September 2019 – September 2020
Atelier Van Lieshout will mount the massive installation House of Transition for the public art exhibiting FOKUS FAVORITEN in Vienna. The installation consists of the two works Drop Hammer House and Phoenix – together harnessing the power of industrial processes in homage to the former working class neighborhood. Drop Hammer House quite literally smashes metal objects (including cars) into fodder for new products while Phoenix is a series of kilns used to cast iron, smoke fish, bake bread and incinerate waste, transforming detritus into new energy.
Sonnwendplatz, Favoritenstrasse 76, 1100 Vienna
Commissioned by KÖR – Kunst im öffentlichen Raum Wien
‘Secret Society’, AVL Mundo, Rotterdam (NL)
7 September 2019 – 22 September 2019
Be welcome to visit the group exhibition Secret Society, on display from the 8th until the 22nd of September. The opening is on Saturday September 7th from 16:00hrs until 21:00 hrs in a yet undisclosed location within the AVL Mundo premises.
Participating artists: Joost Benthem – Vincent Ceraudo – Gaëlle Choisne – Paul Geelen – Carlijn Kingma – Chaim van Luit – David Maroto – Anthony Nestel – Jennifer Rubell – Joop Schafthuizen – Rustan Söderling and others
Curated by: Ellis Kat and Joep van Lieshout
Exhibition:
September 8th – September 22nd, 2019.
On Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays from 12:30 – 17:30
AVL Mundo, Keileweg 18, Rotterdam
Entrance = free
‘Dysfunctional’, Carpenters Workshop Gallery, Venice (IT)
7 May 2019 – 24 November 2019
Group exhibition at Galleria Giorgio Franchetti alla Ca’d’Oro on the Grand Canal during Biennale Arte 2019
Atelier Van Lieshout artworks on display: Old Map Lamp (2019), The Clever Lamp (2019), Mammal Lamp (2019), Arianne (2019), Girl Lamp (2019), Ballerina Lamp (2019), Sausage with Funnel Lamp (2019), Small Sausage with Funnel Lamp (2019).
‘Vrijplaats bij MIJ’, Museum IJsselstein, IJsselstein (NL)
From the 8th 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)
‘Blast Furnace’, Art OMI, Ghent (USA)
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
‘RENEGADE’, Gió Marconi, Milan (IT)
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
‘ArtZuid 2019’, Amsterdam (NL)
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.
‘Mutant Nature’, Carpenters Workshop Gallery, Paris (FR)
19 June 2019 – 24 August 2019
Carpenters Workshop Gallery, Paris, France
‘The CryptoFuturist and The New Tribal Labyrinth’, Pioneer Works, New York (USA)
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).
‘Killing Time’, Willem Twee, Den Bosch (NL)
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
‘BIG AND PLENTY’, AVL Mundo, Rotterdam (NL)
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
‘Naked’, Museum Kranenburgh, Bergen (NL)
What is naked in contemporary times? With the exhibition NAKED – The Vulnerable Body, Museum Kranenburgh considers the changing meaning of the naked in the visual culture of the
past decades: from shock to familiarity, from taboo to openness – and sometimes back again. Despite revealing our soul and bliss on Facebook and Instagram, naked nipples remain strictly taboo. Perfectly photographed bodies on television, in magazines, and online make us insecure, uncomfortable even, about our own bodies. Atelier Van Lieshout presents the sculptures Penis XL and Womb M.
The artworks are on display untill the 3rd of February 2019.
‘Market Forces’, HERO Gallery, Amsterdam (NL)
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)