Design #5

Design #5

Jólan van der Wiel

23 November 2019 to 3 January 2021

From 23 November 2019 until the 3rd of January 2021 the Princessehof Ceramics Museum presents Design #5: Jólan van der Wiel - Dragonstone. The exhibition includes an intriguing installation which combines design, ceramics and magnetic powder. Van der Wiel uses magnetic fields in unprecedented ways to give shape to his works, which look extraterrestrial.

The visitor is introduced to an entirely new craft: magnetic ceramics. In his work, Van der Wiel uses the magnetic field as a tool to control and manipulate his material. The works he made for the exhibition in the Princessehof were shaped by magnetic force fields.

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Dragonstone
Already in 2011 Van der Wiel started experimenting with magnetic ceramics, which he calls ‘dragonstone’. In order to put his personal stamp on the objects, the artist mixes clay with metal powder. The iron particles respond to the magnets Van der Wiel arranges around the material. The artist was given ample opportunity at the European Ceramic Work Centre and during a residency in China to explore the limits of his magnetism and defy gravity.

The High Frontier
The six-metre-long work shown in the exhibition is inspired by the 1976 book The High Frontier: Human Colonies in Space. In the book, the American physicist and space activist Gerard K. O’Neill delves into the idea of residential communities in space. Van der Wiel’s work explores how you can provide gravity in a space colony. It is up to the viewer to take the next step and continue to fantasise about life on ‘The High Frontier’.

Jólan van der Wiel
Based on his fascination for extreme natural phenomena and the influence of natural forces on material, Jólan van der Wiel (1984) experiments with matter, the environment and techniques in search of the natural logic of design. Van der Wiel graduated from the Gerrit Rietveld Academy’s designLAB department in 2011 and in the same year he founded his own multidisciplinary studio in Amsterdam, now located in Zutphen. His work has been exhibited worldwide, including at the Metropolitan Museum and the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum in New York, the Maritime Museum in Amsterdam, the Grand-Hornu Museum (Belgium), the Design Museum Ghent, the London Design Museum, the Bauhaus-Archiv Museum (Berlin), and the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. Van der Wiel’s innovative work has been awarded the Design of the Year Award in London, the Interior Innovation Award (Cologne), the DMY Award (Berlin), and the BIO 23 Award at the 23rd Biennial of Design in Ljubljana.

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