Studio Job

Graduate in three-dimensional design of the renowned Design Academy Eindhoven, The Netherlands, Job Smeets (b.1970, Belgium) is the founder of Studio Job, based in Antwerp.

Studio Job is known for his production of highly expressive, usually one-off or limited-edition works, often sculpted in bronze, or casted in ceramics, or finely constructed in marquetry. Employing iconographic, pan-historic imagery which can be at the same time heraldic as well as cartoon-like, the results are consistently monumental and yet somehow primitive, and generally read neo-renaissance, clearly fantasist, and certainly more mannerist than modernist.

Projecting a strong narrative quality, suggesting often a heroic battle between good and evil, its gorgeous collections seem born more from a medieval, guild-like process than an industrial approach.

Selected galleries have collaborated with Studio Job on several major collections and exhibitions worldwide, including solo exhibitions in New York, Tokyo, Los Angeles, Paris, London, Milan, Geneva, Miami and Basel.

Although, by definition, its work has primarily been geared to collectors and museums, Studio Job has collaborated successfully with various like-minded publishers, including Bulgari, Swarovski, Bisazza, Venini, Royal Tichelaar Makkum, Nodus and Moooi.

Its work has been exhibited collected by numerous museums, including MOMA, Victoria & Albert Museum, FIAC, Cooper-Hewitt, Guggenheim, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, ING art foundation, Wallraf-Richartz-Museum, NRW Forum, Z33 and several mayor Dutch museums incl. Groninger Museum, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam and Zuiderzee Museum.

Aside of the premises, in Antwerp has been opened also the Studio Job Gallery, a curatorial exhibition space for contemporary art and design.