White Queen

About Marcel Wanders

DESIGN OR ART? “I am here to create an environment of love, live with passion, and make our most exciting dreams come true.” Marcel Wanders is the enfant terrible of the international design scene. He does away with all rigid rules and cannot be pigeonholed. To put it shortly: Wanders is a liberator. As such, he gets down to work and frees the ideas of his exuberant imagination,

BACKGROUND INFORMATION

DESIGN OR ART?

“I am here to create an environment of love, live with passion, and make our most exciting dreams come true.”

Marcel Wanders is the enfant terrible of the international design scene. He does away with all rigid rules and cannot be pigeonholed. To put it shortly: Wanders is a liberator. As such, he gets down to work and frees the ideas of his exuberant imagination, translating them into projects that surely have more in mind beyond pure function. Only a creative mind like Wanders could come up with an idea such as the “One Minute Sculpture,” which he makes with his own hands and then gilds, as though on a production line. An homage to a golden handcraft and simultaneously a humorous critique of mass production.

Wanders is also an avowed fan of, to put it in his own words, the grandest design achievement of all time: evolution. With this in mind, his photographs Three Queens seem like fantastic portraits of three queen bees that complaisantly and stylishly or with cool distance rein over an “environment of love.” A honeycomb-like background alienates the quintessentially beautiful creatures.

“Photography is the most influential medium, I think. It makes the most bizarre realities look as normal as the girl next door, makes illusions accessible, and lets us feel connected to all the magnificent things the world has to offer,” according to Wanders, whose works can be seen in MoMA New York, MoMA San Francisco, and Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam.

Horst Klöver

VITA

1963	born in Boxtel near Amsterdam, Netherlands
1981-1982	Academie voor Industriële Vormgeving (design academy), Eindhoven, Netherlands
1982-1985	Academie voor Toegepaste kunsten, Maastricht, Netherlands
1983-1985	Academie voor Schone kunsten, Hasselt, Belgium
1985-1988	Hogeschool voor de Kunsten, Arnheim, Netherlands
	Cum Laude Certificate 1988
seit 1988	freelance industrial and product designer
1989-1991	lecturer, Hogeschool voor de Kunsten, Rotterdam, Netherlands
1990-1992	designer, Landmark Design & Consult b.v., Rotterdam, Netherlands
1990	lecturer, Rietveld Academie, Amsterdam, Netherlands
1991-1993	lecturer, Academie voor Industriële Vormgeving, Eindhoven, Netherlands
1992	Wanders founds Droog Design, together with Dutch designers and concept artists
1992-1995	partner, WAAC's Design & Consults, Rotterdam, Netherlands
1992	juror, Rotterdam Design Prize, Netherlands
1993-1994	lecturer, Rietveld Academie, Amsterdam, Netherlands
1995-2001	director, Wanders Wonder, Amsterdam, Netherlands
1995	juror, Rotterdam Design Prize, Netherlands
1996	releases the famous "Knottet Chair", produced for Droog Design
1997	juror, Limperg Award, Netherlands
2000	founds "Moooi"
	juror, Kho Liang Ie Award, Netherlands
	juror, Françoise van den Bosch prize, Netherlands
	project director, Vitra Summer Workshops, France
	lecturer, SFMoMa, USA
	lecturer, trend-forecasts, Netherlands Fashion Forecast Institute
2001	project director, Vitra Summer Workshops, France
	lecturer, Limn, San Francisco, USA
	lecturer, Design Academy, Niederlande
	founds Marcel Wanders studio, Amsterdam, Netherlands
2003	lecturer, FutureDesignDays, Boras, Sweden
ab 2004	art director and co-owner, LUTE SUITES, Amsterdam, Netherlands
	lecturer, Museum of Art & Design, New York, USA
	lecturer, Design Festival, Portland, USA
2005	guest editor, The International Design Yearbook 2005
	interior design, restaurants Blits, Rotterdam, Netherlands
	interior design, restaurant Thor (Hotel on Rivington, New York, USA)
	lecturer, Thailand Creative and Design Centre, Bangkok, Thailand
	lecturer, International Dutch Design Congress, Eindhoven, Netherlands