M.E. speaks to Job Smeets of Studio Job about the worlds of art, design and letting go...
You tread a fine line between art and design, but clearly operate in a design world; which world do you truly belong to?
It’s not that we start from design and try to translate that into art or something, it’s just that we play with the pieces, building blocks, and iconography that surround us in our daily life.
Objects like the oversized pots and pans that formed part of your last piece; The Gospel?
Yes. Pots and pans. Those pots and pans make things lighter, relativate you, your being; it’s about trying to create still life atmospheres. A still life painter paints pots and pans and when you make pieces very big, it’s strange because other things get small and we always wonder whether we make things bigger or make ourselves smaller. It's about trying to visualise the relative importance of what we are doing. It's difficult to talk about it, I should write a book instead of making sculptures...
You say sculptures, and make references to painting. The artist Grayson Perry, uses ceramics – essentially a product or object as a medium for his artistic expression. Are you doing the same thing?
Yes, in a way. You try to find a way to express your view on society, on the world - life in the end. We always try to make a 3D portrait of how we see our environment; and it’s not about educating or teaching people a lesson, its much more like a diary, of what we see and we try to express it in sculptures. We operate in the design world but we are more or less artists in the way we work and think.
We were 18 we made the decision to go to design school instead of the art school and now years later you find us here. We know the route and the way in the world of design, and we try to escape as much as we can, but I get the feeling we are in East Germany and we want to cross the wall to West Germany.
Why don’t you do this?
Nynke and I started the studio 10 years ago, and overall design was all about the product; product developing, finding producers and so on, but we said we don’t want to go that way, but would prefer to develop our unique pieces; we want that creative freedom. Our work started off as a rebellion against the existing field, but it developed into something which is really standing on its own and it could, as well, stand in the world of art. But Nynke and I really see that we wandered that path from design to art over the last ten years, like a long tunnel, but in the last couple of years, maybe since Robber Baron, we are entering more the world of art rather than the world of design but we are still stuck in the establishment of design.
It’s strange, because when you’re 18 and you choose to go to art school, you leave 4 years later as an artist and nobody will fight over it but we’ve been studying ten years to become artists and we still don’t have the guts or nerve to say we are artists, even though we make art. It’s inspiring also trying to escape. Everybody is trying to escape their situation, nobody is happy, everyone always wants something else. We use that grief as inspiration and yes, we want to enter the world of art. But it takes a long time because the world of art is not really waiting for ex-designers to come to them. Also we are constantly in the context of design and no art gallery is visiting the design scene. I agree with this.
Do you feel that there is a barrier up against you entering the world of art?
Everyone is saying there is an art/design art/fashion crossover and that it is coming together, but I don’t believe that to be honest. Maybe Nynke and I are the poster boy and girl of people who do ‘design art’, maybe we are the pioneers in the world of design art, but I hate that word or saying to describe something. There is a big difference between design and art, Nynke and I notice it; it’s not a feeling but a fact. The fields of art and design are now being presented together for the first time in Basel for instance, in the same space, but I’m sure that art feels like it’s in the design ghetto there.
There’s a bridge to walk but the only way to take the bridge is not to push everybody but to make convincing pieces that can really stand up in the world of art. Also, we’ve been working for ten years. Just to stop now and say “We’re quitting our company, closing our ateliers. We are now artists”, it doesn’t work like that. We want it to be a very slow detailed process, because the path from design is interesting and unique to wander. I think Nynke and I are nearly ready, for the first time in Milan this year, where we showed The Gospel, we really thought “OK the crunch is here.” and immediately design seems to be kind of making trends around that and we really don’t want to go there anymore. Our answer is to start making art and stop making design.
I think this might have been the last time we presented our work in the context of design. We are really open also to start talking to art galleries. We did over 200 design exhibitions in the last 10 years and Nynke and I are also tired. We feel very alive when it comes to creation and inspiration, but we are a little bit tired when it comes to the scene. Having your retrospective with Moss is kind of it. The collaboration with Moss is incredible and I think we inspired each other and learned. But our work is also getting larger and it might be difficult to present that kind of work in design.
But they’ve been like your gallerists for some time now...
True, but there’s no real framework for that in the world of design. It’s a tiny world with only a few major players, which didn’t even exist some years ago. It’s totally new way of thinking and working in the world of design and I think that Moss are doing a fantastic job.
Would you consider starting your own venture as pioneers of this transition space between art and design? Perhaps curating?
Actually, we were even thinking about opening our own gallery. We would love to do some of that work, but our heart is truly in making pieces. I would love to curate as a one off, and Nynke and I collect art and design personally, but in the end the highest goal is for us to be artists in our atelier making sculptures. I can’t let go of that. You can never say never, but the way it looks now we are concentrating on unique, instead of industrial pieces and being even more undercover in our ateliers.
There’s a strong element of craft to your work as well – is that central?
Oh yes. It’s central. We believe the execution of the idea should be as good as possible, and then of course you enter the world of craft, finding the best people to make the best pieces – Jeff Koon’s pieces are also perfectly produced, which adds to their artistic value, but at the end, Nynke and I are never interested in ‘celebrating the world of craft’. That’s a big misunderstanding; we’re not contributing to techniques or aiming to revive old techniques, that’s not our goal. Our goal is purely to sculpture the idea as detailed and as closely as possible, in which of course, then craft plays a central role.
Your Bavaria series was ‘crafted’ and traditional but the same time, rather loaded with iconography. It seems to have been drawn from a wide range of influences...
It’s definitely European I think. I’m not ashamed to say that. Our roots are European. I’m not Belgian or Dutch but European, and I think our iconography comes from the European standpoint, and our view on other cultures. We use that iconography to express what we want to express. For instance, we would never do a Mickey Mouse series - I love Mickey but it’s not part of my culture; its part of someone else’s culture. It's like a language. I could try to write a book in Chinese, which would be really difficult, but I can have depth of my expression in Dutch. But it’s not like we close our eyes at the border of Europe either.
It can be quite a dark language... Although many of your pieces are instantly colourful, tactile or shiny, there is often a dark undercurrent.
Yes. It’s the time we’re living in. I think we are living in some kind of Middle Ages and our work is not there to make people happy, That’s another difference between art and design. In the world of design, 90% of the things that are made are there to entertain you or provide a function or make you smile. We never think about users, or clients, we just think about ourselves. I think the recent periods of time have been dark, but that is inspiring and I think that life is a very dark thing. I mean, we all die, so that’s quite tragical.
What are you communicating though? You’re making your ideas physical...
No it’s not about confronting people with horror. Because our work is very intuitive, and because there are a lot of strange situations in our world, it has a big influence on our work but we don’t try to shock.
Is it more of an exploration, or narrative?
It’s more like a nightmare than a narrative. We are not really trying to discuss a theme but we are communicating mixed messages that are conflicting and unclear.
Take the Bavaria series. If you look at it for a second, it's really happy colours but if you look at the compositions, they are really strict and geometric and nearly classicist - so it's very much like the iconography has two sides. They seem conflicting and sometimes cynical, or ‘keeping up an appearance’ – that’s quite important in our work. And life is often like that. We find it interesting to work with all those aspects. We are not only happy clowns.
It’s not that much about people too – you mention that you don’t consider the user or client at all when making your work...
Well, Nynke and I do not particularly adore the race of human beings at the moment and so they aren’t often actors in our work...
So why did you want to be designers?
Nynke and I often try to figure it out; I think it might have been a stupid decision! It was more or less spontaneous, and more or less in the right direction. We probably should have gone to art school but we use this as inspiration in our work. I don’t know why we didn’t become artists immediately. I think it had to be that way.
But it’s tragic. I’m 38 years old and still not an artist. But when you are perfectionist, you have to be convinced that you are there. We knew that we aren’t designers – but then in this world you’re so many things.
So what’s next?
Nynke and I were really close to starting our own gallery, but that’s also not what we want – to become managers, so we let go of that, and now we are totally focussed on making new work and this time 100% letting go of design, even though we have a great place there.
I guess we are in the phase of saying goodbye and trying to open the door to art...
Photographs (where uncredited) R. Kot.
