Wieki Somers (STUDIO WIEKI SOMERS)
- Country(activity based)：
- The Netherlands
- Genre：
- Design
Profile
The studio has developed an international reputation since 2003 for the extraordinary way the designers unite surprising fantasies about everyday things with a great sensitivity for materials, technological detailing and aesthetic finish. They transform of products into a special experience.
They undertake commissions for international companies, museums and galleries such as Galerie Kreo in Paris. They design for manufacture and for small-scale artisanal production and at a variety of scales, for interiors and public spaces.
Their well-know works include the 'Bathboat', 'High Tea Pot', 'Blossoms', 'Bellflower' and the 'Merry-go-round Coatrack' at Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen. They have won various prizes (including The Golden Eye of the Dutch Design Awards 2009), and their works are included in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam, and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.
About works / performance
- Bathboat; By turning a small boat inside out it becomes a bath. Floating on the water and bathing in the water deal with so much similar feelings and elements that they are combined in one installation.
- The 'High Tea Pot' is a porcelain teapot in the shape pig's scull, the tea-cosy is made of rat's fur. For this project we researched Roman cookery books and the sixteenth-century still lifes of Frans Snijders in which game birds and hares are strewn among the fruit. For us, this defines decadence: where tasteful and distasteful, sorrow and desire are indistinguishable. With this teapot you cannot avoid a moment of decadence as your pour a cup of tea.
- 'Blossoms' is a vase from which abstract twigs sprout. The ceramic twigs are fused with real nature; the prints of weeds are entwined with real greenery.
- Merry-go-round coatrack; The coatrack stands like a merry-go-round in the entrance space of Museum Boijmans van Beuningen Rotterdam. The system is inspired by the mineworkers from whom their coats had to be hoisted back up because the space was so limited. The coats hanging from the coatrack fill the empty space below the ceiling. Throughout the day its form and colour changes constantly, acting as a mirror for the museum's activities. Other proporties of the visitors like bags are being displayed in transparant meshlockers, as museumpieces. It is a cross between an artistic installation and a functional fixture.
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