Via Core77 (the exhibition’s photo gallery can be found here):
The Netherlands has 16 over million inhabitants and an estimated 18 million bicycles. This summer the Designhuis in Eindhoven will honour this very Dutch phenomenon with an exhibition titled “Bicycle”.
From 22 June through 5 October 2008 this exhibition will form the heart of a 100 day two-wheeler event with a wide range of activities, lectures and trips.
The Dutch are born on a bike, it is sometimes said. They use the bike in large numbers in their daily commute to school or work or as a tool for transporting kids, groceries and mail. As a healthy hobby for young and old or as a (top-class) sport, they ride it by the thousands on the road, on the track, on forest paths or on a cross-country course. Yes, the bicycle is even considered a vehicle for good causes.
Partly as a result of this versatile use, next to the ‘standard’ touring bike a lot of variations and niche markets have come into being: the hybrid, children’s bikes, folding bikes, mother bikes and grandmother bikes, racing bikes, cross hybrids, mountain bikes, ATB’s, reclining bikes, BMX bikes, electrical bikes. Plus all kinds of bicycle carts to transport children or objects. Not to mention clothes and accessories: from bags, baskets and children’s seats to pumps and many lighting systems.
The Designhuis in Eindhoven honours this phenomenon from 22 June through 5 October in the form of the exhibition “Bicycle”. The exhibition will give an overview of the bicycle in its context, as a means of transport, a social phenomenon, as a means of recreation, as a lifestyle, as a means of engaging in (top-class) sport. The Designhuis will show how such an ordinary and everyday object as the bike remains a subject of research, development and design creativity. Motivated by desires and needs of consumers or by their own experiences designers keep finding inspiration for new forms, functions and materials in an ‘ordinary’ tool like the bike. It is exactly the cross-pollination between the creative industries and the manufacturing industries that appear to be a fertile breeding ground for innovation.
With the exhibition BOLD, Studio Job, the DESIGNHUIS is the first to present a Dutch retrospective exhibition of the work of Job Smeets and Nynke Tynagel who are widely considered to be among the world’s leading designers today. This exhibition, co-produced with Z33 and compiled by curator Mark Wilson, offers rich visual works that lets industrial design flow smoothly into visual design and introduces the visitor into Studio Job’s way of thinking and working.
The exhibition in the DESIGNHUIS consists of forty works that show a selection of iconic and often symbolic works next to the more down-to-earth designs by Studio Job. Studio Job uses a clever play of measurements, materials and study of the primordial shape to question the common notions on functionality, mass-production and style. The archetypical shapes of a vase, a candlestick or a tea pot are magnified, turning the designs into symbols of their own shapes. The materials are selected for their tactile and plastic qualities. You can see and feel the prints Job and Nynke made in them. Dead objects almost seem to come alive. Bulk and decorative ornaments add to the unreal look of the designs.
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