Atelier Van Lieshout

Atelier Van Lieshout was founded in 1995 by Joep van Lieshout (1963). AVL receives international recognition for the handmade polyester sculptures and installations that are a cross between art, architecture and design. The artworks embody ideas about art and society: from the utility sculptures of the 1980s and the mobile homes of the 1990s to the free state AVL-Ville (2001) and Slave City (2003-2008) and in 2020 The Pendulum, ‘the clock will solve all the problems in the world’.

Cascade, made at the time of the oil crisis (2009), also contains a social statement, a somewhat sinister image in the external form of a monument, in which Van Lieshout’s visual language, the ‘slapstick’ type, is not lacking. The image evokes associations with the economic crisis around 2009 and remains very much alive as a “cry for help” about the depleted resources, the great concern for the earth and the consumer society.