The Wellness Skull

Product design

Atelier Van Lieshout’s Wellness Skull explores the vanity of the wellness industry as a symbol of earthly self-experience over spirituality.

By Katie Dominy / 24-11-2008

Beauty from the inside out.

Sitting for four months outside Vienna’s contemporary art centre Kunsthalle Wien is a giant white fibreglass skull: the Wellness Skull by Dutch artist Joep van Lieshout.

Inside, the skull is set up as a mini health centre, with a selection of relaxation areas. In the neck of the skull is a small bath and a sauna is contained within the head of the skull. When the sauna is turned on, hot air streams out of the eye sockets. Once a month, on a Saturday afternoon, the public can climb inside the skull to take a tour of the facilities.

The skull refers back to the vanity symbol, a prominent theme in Dutch Old Master paintings, especially in the still life, where symbols of transience reminded the viewers that life was short and in the hands of God.

Joep van Lieshout takes this theme to comment on the current relationship between divine powers and the secular powers. “The heavenly power is the big unknown, the death of the hereafter, the skull the physical shell of the mind. The earthly power is an economical power and money plays an important role on our contemporary society. Gradually faith loses all its importance and is replaced by an alternative ‘self experience’, through travel, sports and wellness centres.” Van Lieshout notes that the work is also a critique on the new relaxation industry, where companies create large franchised chains of fitness and sports centres, growing ever bigger on the promise of bringing eternal youth and wellbeing to their customers. The work was originally made for the Paderborn Mystery exhibition held in 2007 in Germany.

Atelier Van Lieshout (AVL) was founded by artist Joep van Lieshout in 1995 in Rotterdam as a multidisciplinary art practice encompassing installation, design, furniture and architecture. Joep van Lieshout called the practice Atelier Van Lieshout to emphasise the fact that the works of art are not solely his ideas, but are produced by a creative team of artists, designers and architects. Atelier Van Lieshout is currently also in Germany as the focus of a major retrospective exhibition in Ludwig Forum, Aachen entitled Das Haus that runs until January 11 2009.

The Wellness Skull installation runs from November 19 to March 15 2009 at KÖR, Kunsthalle Wien public space Karlsplatz, Treitlstraße 2, 1040 Vienna.

Image: Joep van Lieshout, Wellness Skull, © KÖR / Photography: Stephan Wyckoff, 2008