Skin Collection

00:00:06

In my studio, it's a little bit like a secondhand shop with old stuff. So I can pick from the other stuff that I have and it makes weird matches. Sometimes I cannot imagine them, but just because they're standing next to each other, suddenly I see it.

00:00:25

I was having bags of these small bits of skin and having all these frames which I wanted to cover. And I tried many things, and this is how they naturally came together. And first I tried a sewing machine, but of course this didn't work out to cover the piece, and then gluing was the idea.

00:00:58

By covering the item, it's all about letting go because if you want to control what you're actually doing, you have a hard time and that makes it nice to see where at least it leads up to.

In Search of Nothingness

00:01:20

I was having some leather pieces of waste, I was cleaning the floor and, and I was about to throw it away. And when I saw it, it's like: ‘Whoa, this is nice. This is so unintended.’ And that's what grabbed me about it. I was a bit done with the intentions all the time.

00:01:49

I find it very hard not to make something that looks like something. So by putting them like: ‘oh, this looks like a tree. Oh, this looks like a bird. Oh, if you turn it around like this, oh, it's like whatever.’

00:02:04

And I wanted to make something that looks like nothing. It has no line to something that I already knew. And that was a big discovery like, wow, I like walking new trails rather than, ‘oh, I made this already, but I make it just a little bit different’

00:02:27

I felt like I've been limited, limiting myself for a long time by making objects. Why? Because I made also a lot of chairs which you cannot sit on. So why do I call it a chair? Just because it reminds you of a chair by its shape or its color? But if you cannot use it, what is it a chair for?

00:02:52

In Search of Nothingness Collection, it's opened me up. It creates very different work because it's much more open because it doesn't need to be something.

00:03:04 (184 seconds)

And that's what this project was about and it gave me so much joy back. Because in all these years, I've been making items at some point it's like, what am I going to make for the next show? The show is already there, but the works are not there yet.

00:03:22

And this is a little bit the other way around. It's much nicer to make something and then show it. Because it's, there's also some kind of pressure in there. ‘What's the next collection about? What are you working on now?’ This question is always asked. It was, it was a relief to say, ‘well, I don't know. I just don't.’

00:03:58

I’m Pepe Heykoop. I don’t know if I’m a designer.