Artist captivates crowd with lecture

Prominently displaying his unconventional approach to design, noted Dutch artist Joep van Lieshout held the attention of a filled-to-capacity crowd last night in the basement of Meyerson Hall. Van Lieshout, whose exhibit opens today at Penn's Institute of Contemporary Art, conducted a lecture and slideshow as part of a series hosted by the Graduate School of Fine Arts. About 200 people, mostly graduate students, attended the event. Fine Arts Dean Gary Hack said the program was a means of closing the gap between the student body and the typically avant-garde ICA, which is located at 36th and Sansom streets. "We've noticed that there has been a division between the campus and the ICA," Hack said. "With [ICA Director] Claudia [Gould], we've resolved that we will try to do more like this." The exhibit at the ICA marks the first major traveling display of van Lieshout's work in the United States. His creations have appeared in many galleries, including New York City's Museum of Modern Art. Currently operating an architecture and design studio in the Netherlands, which he started in 1987, van Lieshout designs and builds highly functional objects with an emphasis on "very simple standard furniture" for everyday living. Van Lieshout has also worked on civil projects for cities in the Netherlands. One particularly fanciful plan he described called for prisons created for the manufacture of alcohol --with inmates providing free labor. Mobility was another theme of the show, with several items incorporating wheels that allowed for easy transport. Several of his more unorthodox constructions -- which included a series of "sensory deprivation chambers" designed to cut a person off completely from the outside world and a Mercedes transformed into an armed pickup truck -- elicited laughter from the audience. Although he has created an assortment of weapons and included designs for self-sufficient, survivalist living in many of his projects, van Lieshout denied that his work possessed ulterior motives. "I am not at all interested in politics," he said. "I am interested in life." But when asked by an audience member why he chose to build weapons, van Lieshout responded, "[Weapons] are amoral. I don't like morality." Many attendees had strong opinions about the messages conveyed by the works. William Mangold, a senior studying architecture at the Rhode Island School of Design, said he liked the fact that "he's fresh, he has attitude about things," adding that it was the best lecture he had ever attended. And Peter Knutson, who is in his first year of studying architecture in the GSFA, said, "There's actually nothing I didn't like?. He's coming from a position of sheer utility." At the conclusion of the lecture, the audience traveled upstairs where the speaker talked with students who sought autographs or a chance to ask questions.