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Infernopolis

Project Exhibition 'Infernopolis', Submarine Wharf
Furniture AVL Shaker Chair, AVL Glyder Family
Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam
Location Onderzeebootloods Rotterdam (NL)

In 2010 Atelier van Lieshout was invited by the Museum Boijmans van Beuningen to hold an exhibition in a giant submarine shed in the Rotterdam harbor area. In the 5,000 m2 hall, the spectacular exhibition Infernopolis was set up, which was ultimately proclaimed by the Volkskrant as ‘indisputably the art hit of the summer.’

Atelier van Lieshout created a chilling setting in which medical instruments, vacuum pumps, silos, skulls, skeletons and giant sperm cells and body organs played the leading role. Two enormous installations, "The Technocrat" and "Cradle to Cradle," were set up amid a forest of existing and new sculptures, all dissolving the boundaries between good and evil, life and death, and reality and fiction.

Lensvelt supplied the furniture for this impressive exhibition, which ultimately attracted as many as 20,000 people. People could shake it all off on one of the AVL Shaker Chairs or take a moment to unwind on the AVL Glyder Collection, which was colored just as expressively as the exhibition itself.

Read more about the cooperation between Atelier van Lieshout and Lensvelt here.

Joep van Lieshout reclining on his own purple Glyder sofa in a vast industrial hall, visitors talking behind him

Joep van Lieshout on his own designed Glyder sofa

AVL sculptures at Infernopolis: giant BarRectum (2005), Bikinibar and Les Mammifères (2006) in the Submarine Wharf hall, purple table and chairs

AVL sculptures: BarRectum (2005), Bikinibar (2006), Les Mammifères (2006) and many more

AVL Shaker chairs and AVL Body tables

Multicolumn with images

AVL WWIII (2010), the gigantic blue cannon, aimed across the concrete floor of the Submarine Wharf hall at Infernopolis

AVL WWIII (2010) 'the Gigantic Blue Cannon

A visitor reads a newspaper on a teal AVL Glyder Sofa at Infernopolis, more Glyders behind in the daylit hall

visitor enjoys AVL Glyder Sofa

AVL Glyder Sofa

AVL Glyder Sofa

AVL sculptures Bad Furniture (2004) and Body Table II (2009) in the white cave interior of Infernopolis, with pink-lit reliefs.

AVL sculptures: Bad Furniture (2004), Body Table II (2009) and more

Joep van Lieshout standing and Hans Lensvelt seated on a red AVL Glyder Sofa in the Submarine Wharf hall

Joep van Lieshout and Hans Lensvelt

AVL Glyder family

Rear support of AVL WWIII (2010), the gigantic blue cannon, at Infernopolis, with a blue container and trestle tables behind

AVL WWIII (2010) 'the Gigantic Blue Cannon'

AVL Glyder Sofa