Atelier van Lieshout

The Agency presents the renowned Dutch artist collective Atelier van Lieshout with their first solo exhibition in London. Installation components and drawings which form part of a much larger ongoing concept by Atelier van Lieshout are presented in the gallery. They are understood as excerpts of the complex utopia which is to be realised as the Free-state Atelier- van- Lieshout- Ville.

As it will be apparent in the gallery installation Atelier van Lieshout’s art is not simply a benevolent rendition of Art = Life in the sense of the Nineteen Sixties but a truly contemporary self-centred concept which does not claim to offer solutions to the community at large but solely benefits Atelier van Lieshout. Upon entering the gallery space the visitor will be confronted by large guns pointing outward. The mortars are both a protective threat against invasion of the private space which is AVL’s personalised utopia as well as a tongue in cheek rendition of the oversize phallus , a metaphor van Lieshout plays on frequently. The element which is protected at such lengths in the gallery is a full scale alcoholic distillery with liquid containers, tables, pipe work, pumps and the samples of different production stages. Further to that architectural drawings reveal other elements of the planned city-state, for example food processing , sleeping arrangements etc.

The crossover between art and livable reality has been a concern of maverick artist Joep van Lieshout and his team from the beginning. As a result all sculptures, objects and installations can be used and are fully multi functional both as art and as aesthetic tools for modern living. The viability of this has been tried and tested in the use of the mobile home units as amazing architectural travelling homes as well as the modelled armature and furniture pieces made from polyester resin which have been incorporated into architect Rem Koolhaas’s building projects. Atelier van Lieshout’s proposal for communal living unlike it’s Sixties predecessors becomes viable simply because it as an unashamedly machiavellian concept, tailor made to function in a consumer orientated and egocentric world. The art of AVL can be made to order , fulfil useful functions and can be mass produced. It is in their very nature that they can supersede their artistic purpose and exist as quirky renditions of desirable ‘designer’ consumables. However, AVL don’t allow their consumer to take control. If you like the furniture you have to live with the fact that their inventor also favours plenty of sex, animal slaughter and guns. You cannot buy yourself into the pleasure without accepting the pain of AVL’s autonomous ideology.

Bio Joep van Lieshout began exhibiting in 1987 and from 1989 started making polyester furniture which later expanded into a wider ranging production of utilitarian goods for simultaneous use in art galleries and actual buildings. In 1990 Joep van Lieshout creates the first mobile unit containing a bar for the Museum Boijmans van Beuningen in Rotterdam. From 1993 onwards van Lieshout began collaborating with others as a team. In 1995 Atelier van Lieshout ( AVL) is established. AVL have exhibited worldwide, a.o. Skulptur Projekte Muenster 1997, The Good , the Bad + The Ugly in the Walker Art Center Minneapolis 1998, a large installation as part of arttranspennine 98 in the Henry Moore Sculpture Institute, Leeds and the Migros Museum for Contemporary Art in Zurich.

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Atelier van Lieshout - Recent Works