Atelier van Lieshout
dal 6/11/2004 al 23/1/2005
Segnalato da
6/11/2004
Atelier van Lieshout
Sprengel Museum, Hannover
The project consists of 10 sculptural elements that they have shown in the past, together with 14 sculptural elements realised expressly for the occasion. Works on paper and sketches will complete the Sprengel Museum Hannover’s exhibition.
The Technocrat
Kurt Schwitters Award 2004 for Visual Arts sponsored by the Niedersächsische Sparkassenstiftung
November 7, 2004 – January 23, 2005
The Sprengel Museum Hannover has made it possible for the Atelier van Lieshout (AVL) to realise “The Technocratâ€, a new installation which encompasses several rooms. This is to honour the artists group and their work as winners of the 2004 Kurt Schwitters Prize for Visual Arts (sponsored by the Niedersächsische Sparkassenstiftung). The project consists of 10 sculptural elements that they have shown in the past, together with 14 sculptural elements realised expressly for the occasion. Works on paper and sketches will complete the Sprengel Museum Hannover’s exhibition.
“The Technocrat†deals with elementary biological processes from everyday activities, such as providing oneself with nutrition, digestion, disposal and recycling. Van Lieshout gives these physiological needs a radical twist by reducing human existence to becoming a digestion machine. Human life’s raison d’être is then limited to creating methane and a role in the nutritional chain of creation and death. The van Lieshout group thus examine, in an ironic and humorous manner, Modern Man in a high-tech environment that apparently guarantees limitless possibilities and freedom.
Joep van Lieshout (born in 1963 in Ravenstein, Holland), established the Atelier van Lieshout (AVL) as a means of facilitating unconventional artistic collaboration in 1995. The result is a stringently complex work incorporating art, design and architectural practice. Joep van Lieshout and AVL have had a number of illustrious solo exhibitions in museums, such as P.S.1 in New York or the Museum für Gegenwartskunst (contemporary art) in Zurich or the Museum Boijmans van Beuningen in Rotterdam. They have also participated in a number of biennials and the Expo 2002 in Biel. Works by AVL/Joep van Lieshout, ranging from toilets, bars, cafeterias, office furniture and entrance areas, can be found all over the world in art and cultural institutions, libraries, theatres and private collections.
From the start, van Lieshout have been exploring and going beyond boundaries that normally exist between autonomous categories of beauty and practicality. In 2001, van Lieshout declared the studio near Rotterdam’s harbour as the independent state of “AVL-Villeâ€, based on individual freedom, equality and honesty. They move between the world of merchandise and the avant-garde, decorating flats like mobile housing, or an academy, or a farm, or even a heating system and composting toilet; each of these are vital aspects of social interaction and infrastructures for people to function in.
Sprengel Museum
Kurt-Schwitters-Platz, 30169 Hannover