In 1995, Joep van Lieshout founded his studio Atelier Van Lieshout (AVL) and has been working under the name ever since. Over the past three deacades, AVL has established a multidisciplinary practice at the intersection of art, design, and architecture. By investigating the thin line between manufacturing art and mass-produced objects, he seeks to push the boundaries between fantasy and function, between fertility and destruction. By dissecting macrosystems such as society as a whole or microsystems such as the human body, his experiments search out alternatives and he has even declared an independent state in the port of Rotterdam called AVL-Ville in 2001, with a minimum of rules and maximum of liberties. On view are sculptures that show AVL’s ongoing fascination with man, machine, and humanity. Nuclear Crypto Helmet makes explicit reference to new technologies and the way humans interact with unpredictable developments. Ghost shows the mysterious workings of the human body in a sculptural way. And Humanoid invites people to see the human soul in natural and man-made objects – the work is a preview of a commission that AVL is creating for a newly developed park adjacent to the Miami Beach Convention Center.
