Escapist Survivalism. From AVL to AVL-Ville and Back Again

Few artists make the news as often as Joep van Lieshout. The products of his company, Atelier van Lieshout (AVL), sometimes elicit violent reactions. It is not that he sets out to shock, in fact he most likes to give pleasure, but his unadulterated lust for escape and freedom simply means he deals with subjects that approach the moral boundaries of those whose thinking is more orthodox. Van Lieshout trained as a sculptor and has expanded the notion of sculpture both towards pure design and to a conceptual approach to our society. In AVL-Ville, the anarchic free state in an unfrequented corner of the port of Rotterdam, the artist and his collaborators have made the boundaries between art and life permeable.