5 questions for Studio Job
The Dutch-Belgian design team Studio Job is known for its hybrid objects between art and design, between timelessness and topicality.
Their work “CENTERPIECE” from the “Oxidized” series can currently be viewed in the Marta exhibition “Unsettling Green”. We were able to ask one of the two founders of Studio Job, Job Smeets, five questions about their work and the exhibition “unsettling green”.
The title of the exhibition is „Unsettling green“. Is green really unsettling, and why?
When green is the color of corrosion like in Oxidized it might be unsettling but when green is the color of fresh grass. So no, green is not always unsettling.
You say yourselves in reference to your work that you have discovered a lost path. Why is this more appealing to you than to create something completely new, something that was never there before?
Sounds like cheeky question! But let me try to help you: Nothing is completely new. Everything is based on former facts. Even fantasies are. Someone who claims to be the god of something completely new is:
- an opportunist
- badly informed
- a snob
- naive
- ignorant
- a liar
How does your creative process work; how do you get your ideas; how is the process structured up to the finished object, and what does that mean to you?
We try to create new images or position existing images in a new context. We look for images every day, all day long. That’s what it is. A databank of images and icons and how they react when you mix or blend them. Like a chemical process, although I’m really bad in chemistry!
What is it that is worth striving for in the ideal of the total work of art, and how do you implement this in practical terms in your works?
In that way the perfect image can exist. The right piece in the right context at the right time. Perfection is a snapshot, a split second. Then it goes. It gives me a buzz.
Your works are often interpreted as criticism of a superficial consumer society. What do you say to that?
It is what it is, and everyone is free to interpret as they like. For me personal, its also about the sculpture, the sculpting itself. Let us all get McDonald’s or become Ikea addicts… whatever:-) Fine with me:-)