Atelier Van Lieshout: The CryptoFuturist and The New Tribal Labyrinth

Pioneer Works presents the largest-scale exhibition of work by Atelier Van Lieshout (AVL) in the United States. The CryptoFuturist and The New Tribal Labyrinth includes the Blast Furnace(2013), a 40-foot-tall industrial structure resembling a steel maze of pipes, conveyor elevators, staircases and mezzanines. Core to the work is the“New Tribe” of metal workers, brought about by a desire for the return to industry, who take residence in the structure, setting the stage for the synthesis of man and machine and refers to the replacement of heavy industry by an immaterial, information-led economy.

Also present are a series of works “Crypto-Futurism,” which draws parallels between the Italian Futurists’ nationalist glorification of new technologies, cities, and war during the 20th century, and emerging fascist tendencies today. The most prominent of these works, Pendulum Press (2019), an oversized mechanical clock powered by a swinging pendulum, crushes objects—in some instances, the artist’s own work—at a precise time.  The machines call to a metaphorical new “beginning of everything” by deconstructing sustainability with techno-modernist speed, and harping to nostalgia for past political theorems.