We just managed to catch the last day of Viktor & Rolf at Studio Job Gallery. Dolls, strangely endearing little dolls dressed to the nines. It all sounds quite prestigious for a young gallery’s second exhibition, but for Job Smeets and Nynke Tynagel, who have together formed Studio Job for over 10 years, it’s not a stretch. They have been collaborating for so many years in so many different ways with the world-renowned fashion duo. What’s more, style Bible Wallpaper crowned them designers of the year and Time Magazine put them in the Top 100 most influential designers. It’s crazy that here at home, their name barely rings a bell for a lot of people.
(interview by Femke Coopmans)
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Not that we’re worried that you’re not sleeping enough, but in recent years, there’s been a massive amount of exhibitions, installations, collaboration and projects by Studio Job.
Job: ‘True, 300 exhibitions worldwide in 10 years’ time is not nothing. But in fact we try to do as little as possible, it’s just that it never seems to work!’
You have had an atelier in Antwerp for many years, Job is Belgian, Nynke is Dutch and no question that your style would have a lot of locals absolutely falling at your feet. Do you have any idea yourself why you have remained relatively unknown around here?
Job: ‘From the beginning of our career, the requests we received were mostly international. We have exhibited from Miami to Tokyo and we never really thought about the fact that our name is not so well known in Belgium. It was only in 2007 that we had our first exhibition here: a retrospective at Z33, the Center for Contemporary Art and Design in Hasselt. Finally our friends and family could actually get a chance to see our objects in person. It was only then that we noticed this had been missing.’
Is the gallery in Antwerp a conscious attempt to change that?
Nynke: ‘Not particularly. Our gallery is our temple, the place where our work can always be displayed in the best possible way. It’s also a place where we can say goodbye to our pieces. That’s something we’ve missed. Up until now, we would make objects in the ateliers and then they would disappear for good out of our sight.’
How important do you consider the location of an exhibition space?
Nynke: ‘The Studio Job Gallery is truly completely of, by and for ourselves. Totally egocentric. Besides that, there isn’t any gallery in Paris or London where our stuff could be exhibited, so then you have to just do it yourself! We show our work here and consider the exhibition space as a sort of free space for artists, designers, museums and other guests.’
And for the atelier? Do you prefer the city or would a house out in the country be just as good?
Job: ‘We have ateliers in the Netherlands and Belgium. Nynke and I work in Antwerp, we have a fantastic house in Zurenborg. Antwerp is an excellent home base for people who travel a lot: small enough to be practical, big enough for plenty of action. Antwerp is a typical export city. This is where things are made that get seen in the ‘real’ cities. I can’t imagine being based in London or New York, there wouldn’t be any breathing space. Big jungles of creativity like that can be very inhibiting. We almost moved to Berlin, but in the end we decided that the city is maybe a little overrated. It is true that we often feel the lure of the countryside. Then we go out on a walk through the woods, fields and mountains. There’s nothing like it!’
You have sometimes been described as having one foot in the Middle Ages. Does that make Antwerp the perfect place for you to find inspiration?
Job: ‘Antwerp is nice and gothic and that suits us, yes. I can’t say that we feel attracted to knights and castles. We see the Middle Ages more as a sort of metaphor for the time in which we live now. It sometimes seems as if we are living in a ‘middle age’, don’t you think? I wonder how people will look back on this era five hundred years from now. The amount of doom scenarios, fear and darkness that we are hit with every day...’
What materials and techniques are best suited to the story that Studio Job has to tell?
Nynke: ‘Heavy materials and obsolete techniques from obscure ages! From a modern interpretation of the inlay work technique from the 17th century to very often the lost wax process. They work well for the portraits and landscapes that we want to create and it also says something about the ephemeral nature of things.’
Speaking of the ephemeral... you see no point in mass production, but at the same time you return to icons, archetypes, models or clichés that seem to persist. In other words, the very things that are or have been constantly reproduced.
Job: ‘Industry and iconography are fully separate from one another. Okay, the icon may need the industry in order to be an icon, but the icon itself has nothing to do with mass production. It’s like a logo or a reminder, something from our collective memory. Something that binds us.’
Studio Job wants to challenge and provoke people. Can you briefly describe how?
Nynke: ‘That’s easy: we just say NO when everyone is saying YES. That’s it.’
What should we expect from your Book of Job, the monograph that you will be launching at the end of 2010? It sounds like: the book of Job from the Bible...
Job: ‘Wow! Where to start... The Book of Job is not just a coffee table book about our work. It’s a gesamtkunstwerk, an object in our oeuvre. Nynke and I designed each page just like the monks did. It’s actually two books. Studio Job is a book on our work and The Book of Job is in fact about the famous story from the Old Testament, printed in Guttenberg [Gutenberg font?] with new illustrations by us. The first edition is signed! Making it took us four years, and also a lot of persuasion to get a major publishing house like Rizzoli to go along with exactly what we had in mind.’(big smile)
Studio Job Gallery
Begijnenvest 8, 2000 Antwerpen, 03/232 25 15
During expositions: di - vr 14u - 18u
Book of Job
135 euro, available at Copyright Antwerp and Ghent
