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“I’m most proud of the more difficult things. Where everyone said, ‘It’s not a good idea,’ ‘It’s not a good artwork,’ or ‘It’s too complicated,’ ‘It’s too expensive,’ ‘It’s too big.’ ‘It’s – you know – you should not do it.’ But then I do it and it becomes wonderful.” — Joep van Lieshout, Atelier van Lieshout

Following his largest installation in the United States to date at Pioneer Works in Brooklyn in the spring of 2019, Joep van Lieshout brought his Atelier van Lieshout to New York in the spring of 2020 for two new exhibitions at the Armory Show and Carpenter’s Workshop Gallery. Aggressively blurring the line between sculpture and functional objects, and between individual and collective realization, van Lieshout delights in pushing the boundaries of his studio practice. In this interview with The Design Edit, van Lieshout discusses his contrarian approach to making work and what inspires him, and we watch in his studio as he and his team at Atelier van Lieshout make his work.

From The Design Edit:

Twenty-five years ago Joep van Lieshout established Atelier Van Lieshout (AVL) in a large warehouse in the harbors of Rotterdam, Netherlands. The company, a guise to poke fun at the myth of individual artistic genius, has since grown into a multidisciplinary practice, attaining international recognition for objects-based projects that balance on the boundary between art, architecture, and design. The workshop has over 20 designers, artists, metalworkers, and craftspeople involved in the manufacturing process of each product, ensuring that each piece is the result of a collective effort, although all under the sole creative direction of van Lieshout.