Job Smeets at Museum W

Photography Arjen Schmitz

Studio Job announce the opening of a new solo exhibition Forever Endeavour, the inaugural show of the new Museum W in Weert, Netherlands. After over 20-years of international success, Job Smeets returns to his hometown Weert to exhibit there for the first time, this will also be his first show in the Netherlands in over ten years. Invited to be the first exhibitor of the newly renovated museum, Job has created a personal journey through all the rooms of the museums’ ground floor, creating a fully submersive installation of his work, both past and present, alongside influences from his life.

FOREVER ENDEAVOR is anything but a classic installation, on the contrary the visitor enters the idiosyncratic and imaginative world of Job Smeets and not only becomes acquainted with his iconic design objects, but also with his roots and sources of inspiration. Job Smeets grew up in Weert a town in the south of the Netherlands and these early influences can be seen much of his sculptural and design work; the traditional carnivals, folklore, the gloom of the local church and the local artisans. “Through the process of working on this exhibition I discovered a context and a starting point for some of the themes in my work, from the Farm objects (Farm, 2008), through to the carnival-like elements in my work (i.e. B*llsh*t Circus, 2019; Always Close, 2018)” explains Smeets, “since I left Weert at 18 I’ve had this very international career, so like the classical story of a wanderer retuning from his travels, I now have the opportunity to show respect to the town that I grew up in. In the same year we have an important show in New York (R&Company Nov) it means a lot to me personally, to do a show as a thank you to where it all began.”

This will be Studio Job’s first exhibition in the Netherlands since the solo show at the re-opening of the Groninger Museum in 2010 (Studio Job & The Groninger Museum). The exhibition title FOREVER ENDEAVOR is a comment on Smeets’s eternal pursuit within his work, striving and labouring on an endless creative lifetime of art and design. A whole range of works will be on show from the initial sketches to the design products, and bronze sculptures, with Studio Jobs’ twenty-year career represented in the hundreds of pieces peppered with influential artefacts, and pieces of other artists. Unlike a traditional retrospective, Job has put together a collection of his own pieces, designs and influences seen together here for the first time, “normally we would have a gallery show for the sculpture, then a product launch in Milan with a producer, but here the whole Studio Job world collides into one experience” Job Smeets.