Atelier Van Lieshout Blast Furnace Cabinet

Atelier Van Lieshout’s Blast Furnace Cabinet shows a domestically scaled version of his Blast Furnace (2013), a 40-foot tall factory-like structure of pipes, chimneys and industrial chambers alongside sleeping quarters, a kitchen and toilets. From Van Lieshout’s New Tribal Labyrinth series, the works investigate the confluence of industry and domesticity, attempting to find utopian ideals within a hybrid capitalist-tribal environment.

The result is a synthesis of man and machine, as the artist’s imagined tribe of metalworkers consciously choose to become one with the furnace, and to live amidst the noise, dirt and dust. Instead of wanting to return to Nature, this tribe wants to return to Industry, to raw materials, to simple products, to social cohesion.