Saar Scheerlings

Born in Eindhoven in 1990, Saar Scheerlings embarked on her artistic journey after studying at the Design Academy Eindhoven and gaining experience as a chef and theater designer. Scheerlings mixes the disciplines of art, design and craft to find processes that give rise to new types and expressions. Her work includes large ceramic vessels that serve as painted maps, decanters that seem unwilling to pour, paintings that resemble fabrics and soft monumental sculptures.

For her, a medium is not defined: she prefers to create her own playing field and associated rules. A great interest in daily life probably comes from her education in design, but she is not very interested in the way products are industrially designed, made and used. She prefers to see forms as intermediate phases of a creative process, a game, a tradition, a ritual, a culinary dish. It is the commitment to this process that gives objects meaning.

Saars work is often triggered by the beauty and dedication of old materials like the antique linens she finds at garage sales in the French countryside where she lives. With a laborious process of sculpting, cutting, sewing and weaving she breathes new life into these materials, transforming them into her monumental talisman sculptures. Weaving is not only a technique for Saar, it is a metaphor for her entire work. She sees her oeuvre as an expanding structure. She not only creates work, she works on her own culture.

Her work has been shown in various international galleries and museums including CoBrA Museum (Amstelveen), Design Museum Gent, Hanwha Galleria (Seoul), Tripostal (Lille), Galerie Fleur & Wouter (Amsterdam), Valerius Gallery (Luxembourg), HAGD Contemporary (Aalborg), Garage Rotterdam and at Palais de Tokyo, Paris, as a finalist for the prestigious Loewe Foundation Craft Prize.