Atelier van Lieshout

(Ravenstein, Netherlands, 1963)

Atelier Van Lieshout, is a workshop located in the ports of Rotterdam, founded in 1995 by the artist and sculptor Joep Van Lieshout. Trained at the Academy of Modern Art in Rotterdam, Ateliers '63 in Haarlem and Villa Arson, Nice, his design principles challenge conventional ideas of utility and functionality, implementing unconventional color palettes and non-traditional materials. Its themes revolve around self-sufficiency, domestication, complex operating systems and the re-contextualization of domestic objects.
Some of his most notable projects are: Infernopolis, which consisted of two immense installations and a forest of sculptures that formed a terrifying scene full of medical instruments, vacuum pumps, skinned bodies, human excrement, giant sperm cells and body organs. From this imaginary, he established similarities between models of society and anatomy. At the Design Miami / Basel 2015 fair, Atelier Van Lieshout presented a habitable sculpture presented by Carpenters Workshop Gallery, a hybrid cave-dwelling with an organic shape, it is a mix between a luxury hall and a primitive home to house a fictitious tribe. Domestikator is a hybrid between art and architecture that deals with human domestication and the domination of the natural environment, presented at the Pompidou Center in Paris in 2017.

His work AVL-Ville, a Free State was part of the banquet_metabolism and communication exhibitions. The project featured a pioneer town, AVL-Ville was art, a sanctuary and a social structure that combined into a functional community with its own farm, its own constitution, a flag and even its own currency.