Joep Van Lieshout – Atelier van Lieshout

Atelier Van Lieshout is the studio founded by sculptor and visionary Joep van Lieshout. After graduating at the Rotterdam Art Academy, Van Lieshout quickly rose to fame with projects that travelled between the world of easy-clean design and the non-functional area of art: sculpture and installations, buildings and furniture, utopias and dystopias.

In 1995, Van Lieshout founded his studio and has been working solely under the studio’s name ever since. The studio moniker exists in Van Lieshout’s practice as a methodology toward undermining the myth of the artistic genius. Over the past three decades, he has established a multidisciplinary practice that produces works on the borders between art, design, and architecture. By investigating the thin line between manufacturing art and mass-producing functional objects, he seeks to find the boundaries between fantasy and function, between fertility and destruction.

Van Lieshout dissects systems, be it society as a whole or the human body. He combines an imaginative aesthetic and ethic with a spirit of entrepreneurship; his work has motivated movements in the fields of architecture and ecology, and has been internationally celebrated, exhibited, and published.

Photo : Oscar Langerak

Art & religion, aesthetics & ethics, future of healthcare, therapeutical value of art, societal role of religion, transdisciplinary approach (art, technology, philosophy, science, theology, ethics, aesthetics, and design).

The Hospital of the Future

The research I will be conducting during my residency at LSRS will be integrated into a broader project I am currently working on, focused on the future of healthcare, the growing influence of technology within this field. This includes topics such as the ethical implications of emerging medical technologies, aesthetic medical interventions, the use of psychological pharmaceuticals for well-being and leisure, and questions around self-determination—from conception to the end of life.

I want to explore the healing powers that art and design have, and how we project our hopes and fears onto them—much like religious relics have done across cultures. I want to investigate the connection between traditional relics and the role that contemporary art and design play in shaping belief and meaning today.

My main research topic about the future of healthcare and the extent to which we can—or should—take control over our own lives, as well as the ethical questions that this imposes, leads me to the broader question of the role of contemporary religion in today’s world. Given the current shifts in global perspectives and societal structures, I will investigate whether existing religious frameworks still resonate with the present day—or if it is time to imagine a new kind of belief system, one that fits better with the realities and values of our time.

• BRUTUS, Atelier Van Lieshout, RED Company en Powerhouse Company, 2021, Rotterdam (NL)
• The Clock Which Will Solve Every Problem in the World, Kunstraum Dornbirn, Atelier Van Lieshout, Verlag für moderne Kunst, 2020, Vienna (AT)
• Dirty Hands, Atelier Van Lieshout, 2019, Rotterdam (NL)
• New Tribal Labyrinth, Atelier Van Lieshout, Grimm Gallery, Frame Publishers, 2014, Amsterdam (NL)
• Furnication, Lensvelt, Atelier Van Lieshout, 2012, Breda/Rotterdam (NL)
• Slave City, Museum Folkwang, Essen, Dumont, 2008, Cologne (DE)
• AVL for Dummies, Atelier Van Lieshout, The Authors, NAi Publishers, 2007, Rotterdam (NL)
• Atelier Van Lieshout – A Manual, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, NAi Publishers, Atelier Van Lieshout, 1997, Rotterdam (NL)