Studio Job: What’s Your Function?

Studio Job Installation at Moss Gallery

Having produced a stockpile of utterly functionless design objects—from Alice In Wonderland-size silverware to a cabinet with a hollowed-out crater in the middle—Dutch design duo of Nynke Tynagel and Job Smeets, who go by Studio Job, is primed for its first retrospective. Opening tonight at Moss Gallery (which has sold the duo’s wares for the past five years), “Studio Job 2006-2008: works in paper/bronze/wood/clay” is a collaboration with Pin-Up Magazine, which created a miniature special feature for the exhibition. According to Pin-Up Editor and Creative Director, Felix Burrichter, who interviewed Smeets for the supplement, the duo has an amazing grasp of art history: Their work draws on everything from Bavarian marquetry to 17th century Dutch earthenware. In addition to making beautifully crafted pieces, Burrichter further credits their mass appeal to “being so different”—ie: the simple fact that they make whatever they want regardless of current trends. Says Smeet, whose designs are geared more to collectors and museums than to admirers of industrial design, “Nynke [Tynagel] and I also don’t get that new trend where designers are now going back to functionalism because of recession and bad economy. I don’t want to go back to the 1950s and I don’t want to use this recession as a new tool to squeeze out some commercial ideas.” Burrichter agrees, “I love [Studio Job] because their designs are useless but in like the best way possible.”

The reception for Studio Job is tonight at the MOSS Gallery for Art & Design, 152 Greene Street, New York, NY. Guests are requested to RSVP.