Elleboogkerk, Amersfoort, NL
“Everything is one, Bert” is the title of a publication of letters from Piet Mondriaan to his friend and benefactor Albert van de Briel. For the exhibition Abrasive Paradise we painted the entire interior of the renovated Elleboogkerk. The lower part of the painting consists of catacombs with figures working and relaxing in the glow of computer and telephone screens. Near the entrance huge undulating colour waves streamed down and different evolutionary and creationist images were painted. On one side a water scene with a whale, Seraphs and Cherubs, a sun fish, medusa and sea stars. On the other side two Piet Mondriaan’s sculpting the first man from the first woman. In the chorus the Theo van Doesburg & Cor van Eesteren’s Maison d’Artiste is depicted as the heavenly Jerusalem.
Photography by Johannes Schwartz
PoMo Museum, Trondheim, Norway
An attic space clad in pine wood. We've painted the walls with colours and images reflecting local nature, as well as Nordic folkloric art: fish, squid, crustaceans, flowers, shells and books, in green, pink and yellow.
The domestic atmosphere, enhanced by soft seating designed by renowned interior architect India Mahdavi, contrasts with the traditional formality of a museum.
Photography by Valérie Sadoun
LeMaire FW 2024 collaboration, Paris, FR
Collaboration with French Fashionhouse LeMaire for their Fall-Winter 2024 collection.
Patterns mimicking marble and wood lend texture to the fabrics and accentuate LeMaire’s signature gestures while strange flowers adorn the borders of a collar in hand embroidery.
Craving for Boijmans, Rotterdam, NL
For the temporarily re-opening of the Boijman Museum in Rotterdam, we painted twenty-five monumental sized titles of works from their collection. Together they formed an enormous Dadaist poem that echos the spirit of the works and their makers.
photography by Aad Hogendoorn
Collection l
The first collection FreelingWaters Cabinets was made in collaboration with the Wrong Shop in London. There are two large one door cabinets: Kasimir and Pina (after Malevich and Baush), a couple of tall narrow ones called Titia and Maria after our mothers, a medium low one door piece called Stanley (after Kubrick) and two bedside tables named William B. (Blake) and William M. (Morris). We created a palette of Mars Black, Titanium White, Burnt Umber, Ultramarine Blue, Cadmium red middle and Cadmium Yellow Light. All sides, tops and bottoms and interiors are covered with different patterns. Sometimes they follow the carpenters architecture of the piece and articulate all different parts, sometimes they are like a skin that subtly dissolve the three dimensional appearance of the cabinet.
Photography by Peter Tijhuis
Ombudsman, the Hague, NL
Series of murals in the staircase of the renovated building of the National Ombudsman, commissioned by Ex architects.
photography by Qiu Yang.
A Mon Seul Désir, Maastricht, NL
Murals, paintings, embroideries, mathematical maquettes, models from Donald Judd sculptures and books in the Bonnefanten museum in Maastricht. The title is taken from one of the Lady and the Unicorn tapestries now in the Cluny museum in Paris.
Mural for Dasja Pankert and Sander van Deventer
Decoration of the serre. A sunset, an octopus, clouds, trees, a moon and stars, an illustration by Alexander Von Humboldt explaining the global relation between heights and flora and some of Henry James’ concrete structures in Las Pozas in Mexico.
Huis in een witte tutu, the New Institute, Rotterdam, NL
A series of painted interventions in the New Institute. In these interventions we made typographical and linguistic references to the programme of Het Nieuwe Instituut. For example, 'Huis in een witte tutu', the overarching name of the series, is an anagram of 'Het Nieuwe Instituut'.
Photography by Corriette Schoenaerts
Mural for Ernest Briët
A scene of the Amstel river near their house as a bedhead. When you are lying in bed and look up you can read “Sleep like a rose”.
Photography by Johannes Schwartz
The Den, UVA/HVA, Amsterdam, NL
Series of murals commissioned by Ex architects to strengthen the identity of the renovated UVA/ HVA building in Amsterdam. Forty-eight life sized octopusses shifting color every corner.
Photography by Johannes Schwartz
Mural for Martine Hogerzeil
Martine wanted to wake up in a forest. When we had painted this bedroom from floor to ceiling we remembered Maurice Sendak’s Where the wild things are. In the beginning of the story Max, who has been behaving ghastly, is sent to his bedroom without supper. Later on this room transforms slowly into a forest. A truly magical sequence of illustrations. (by Maurice Sendak)
Collection ll
Boymans van Beuningen museum in Rotterdam commissioned us to make four cabinets two present a selection of their extensive ceramics collection in their new public MVRDV Depot building. We proposed to make them completely black and white because the pots and dishes would be colourful and we wanted our cabinets to be wild as always but also supportive to the presentation. We made Leida after the lovable caretaker of our studio building in Amsterdam; Scarlett as a tribute to Johansson’s performance in Jonathan Glazer’s Under the Skin; a chequerboard one called Magnus (Carlsen) and a cabinet called Amy (Winehouse) filled with crystal bottles.
Painted Books, We like Art, Amsterdam, NL
The painted books we made for We Like Art resemble the flat cabinets, murals of a decorated cabinet in real size, which form the beginning of our cabinet project.
These ‘flat’ cabinets look very natural, partly because a cabinet is always against a wall. It is the entire appearance without the content. We love the title sequences and credits of films, the cover of the film in fact.
Some are so good that you hardly need the film anymore. For example, the flickering opening of Gaspard Noé’s ‘Enter the Void’ or the credits of ‘Springbreakers’ by Harmony Korine.
That is also the case with the painted books: it is an announcement, a pars pro toto. They are as big as a book and the title and author are on them. On the back of most of them we have written the first and last sentence as a kind of blurb.
Gentle Monster, Seoul (KOR)
Wallpaintings for Insect Kingdom, the flagship store of Gentle Monster in Shenzen China. A central figure in a camouflage suit is surrounded by rocks and creeks, plants and concentric circles of butterflies, moths, grasshoppers and beetles. On the two sides two sea green, six winged Seraphim covered in ochre eyes. We painted this piece in ten days with three assistants.
Collection lll
The third cabinets collection was commissioned by the Future Perfect. We made a large double door called Anderson (Paak, because we were listening to his tiny desk concert all the time while painting it); a midsized one door called Hadassah after painter Hadassah Emmerich; Lucian and Sigmund (the Freuds) two bedside tables; A tall one door cabinet in warm undulating waves on the outside and lined with crystal bottles we named Octavia (Butler) and Frances (McDormand) decorated with verbalised bird sounds. The pigments are Cadmium Orange, Ochre, Emerald Green, Ultramarine Blue, English Red, Mars Black and Titanium White.
Robot Love
Mural for Ine Gevers visionary show Robot Love that advocated a positive approach to the merging of human and artificial life. The painting consists of two layers. One is a pattern of concentric circular bands of fluorescent pink, orange and blue. On top of that a figurative layer in transparent black and white is painted. Between opening theatre curtains appear two huge sprockets with pop lyrics under romantic scenes from Blade Runner 2049, Under the skin and The Watchmen.
Sixteen covers, Eindhoven, NL
Sixteen covers was commissioned by Eindhoven Technical University in context of the renovation of their central building Atlas from the 1960’s. We proposed to make painted reconstructions of covers of important books that have a relation to the schools of the University and published in the 60’s and 70’s so the graphic design would communicate visually with the architecture. One of the books is Rem Koolhaas’ Delirious New York with the iconic watercolour by Madelon Vriesendorp. The original is probably max 50 x 65 cm but our version is more than three by four meters. Fiona Lutjenhuis, great artist and at that time our assistant made this image much more detailed then the original.
Come as you are, Proposals for the Fatih Mosque, Amsterdam, NL
COME AS YOU ARE shows the designs for the entrance doors, tile floors and decorations for the walls of the entrance space and prayer wall of the Fatih mosque in Amsterdam. This mosque has been housed in the former Saint Ignatius Church on Rozengracht since 1982. This building is a beautiful monument of Amsterdam School architecture and is therefore visited not only by Turkish-Dutch and many other religious believers, but more and more by tourists as well.
photography: Qiu Yang
Dries van Noten, Paris, FR
Dries Van Noten invited us to collaborate on a collection of mens clothing, we designed fabrics and painted a 70 meter long mural in the Grand Palais for the show of the collection. We also made some paintings on the shop windows of the Antwerp flagship store. A year later we made a very large mural in the galery of Piercarlo Borgogno in Milan. We painted life size figures and nailed clothes from the collection on the walls to dress them.
FridayNext, Amsterdam, NL
Two murals in the headquarters of interior designer company FridayNext. The murals showcase several items that are sold through their shop accompanied by some rather mysterious objects that we would purchase directly if we would find them in the physical world.
Photography by Johannes Swartz.
