ATELIER VAN LIESHOUT  

Body Architecture

October 20 - November 29, 2008

beaumontpublic is pleased to announce its second large solo-show of Atelier van Lieshout (AVL) in Luxemburg. AVL founded by artist Joep van Lieshout (1963) in 1995 , is a multidisciplinary art team practice encompassing installation, design, furniture and architecture. The works vary from sculptures and paintings, bathrooms and mobile home units, to models for a future urban organization. AVL’s oeuvre focuses on dangerous outbursts of our society and on interlacing of life, creativity and some misleading strategies of decision makers. The unavoidable risk of global capitalism and growth leading to a contemporary form of slavery brings Joep Van Lieshout to the following conclusions:

‘I see parallels in how companies and how the world is organized, in management strategies, and how people do what they are expected to do. I believe that the world is at the brink of very big changes which will go much faster than humans or society can cope with. Apocalypse or revolution. The latter is more challenging. I have allready designed new products, equipment and packaging for our new future!
(Joep Van Lieshout in conversation with Miny Maas, ‘Slave City’ Atelier Van Lieshout, Albion)

AVL’s buildings, interiors, sculptures or paintings develop a beauty, within which organic forms clash with humor and brutality. The autarkic camps, towns (AVL-VILLE, Slave-City) are humanistic projects, functioning like independent cities or pioneering towns. By changing in scale, they open up the blind spots of our society. AVL’s interest in the potential of utopian architecture that can or cannot not be built, in artworks that can exist, in things that cannot be done…the cannot be possible projects. In constant metamorphosis, body parts are turned into buildings, objects turned into body parts.

The show Body Architecture will feature new sculptures and paintings. The works convey a feeling of Acropolis, Hanging Bag, Tree, Natalie, Black Bag Kneeling, Bas, Standing Bag, and a choice of Blood Bags. 12 sculptures accompanied by 12 paintings. The foam coating of the sculptures give the pieces an organic aura of archeological remnants. where as the drawings depict architectural volumes emprisoned in the lines of the design.

Joep van Lieshout, born in Ravenstein (1963) The Netherlands, lives and works in Rotterdam. In 1992 he is honored with the ‘Prix de Rome’ in the Netherlands and in 2004 the Kurt Schwitters award. Important solo shows at: PS1, New York; Museum for Applied Arts, Migros, Zürich; Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, Museum for Applied Arts, MAKs, Vienna; Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam and Sprengel Museum,Hannover. In 2008 two large shows are organized at the Folkwang Museum, Essen and Ludwig Forum, Aachen.