Jerszy Seymour

Jerszy Seymour is a designer working in the expanded sense of the field. He sees design as the creation of situations, as the general relationship we have with the built world, the natural world, other people and ourselves, and as much about the inhabitation of the planet as the inhabitation of the mind. The goal is the transformation of reality guided by constant humour and the idea of the Non-Gesamt Gesamtkunstwerk. His work spans from playing with the industrial and post-industrial produced object, actions, interventions and installations, covering a range of mediums and materials, objects, film, performance, music and writing.

He was born in Berlin in 1968 and grew up in London where he studied at South Bank Polytechnic (1987 – 1990) and at the Royal College of Art (1991 – 1993). Shortly after this he moved to Milan and started his own independent projects, including ‘House in a Box’ in 2002, ‘Scum’ in 2003, and the clothing concept ‘Tape’ in 2003.
 In 2004, Seymour moved to Berlin where he formed the Jerszy Seymour Design Workshop and embarked upon a series of conceptual projects seeking to revitalize the position of design within society. In 2005 he created the ‘Brussels Brain’ installation, (Design Brussels), and, in 2007 the exhibition ‘Living Systems’ (Vitra Design Museum) to investigate the individual economy. In 2008 the installation ‘The First Supper’ (MAK, Vienna) proposed the possibility of an ‘amateur’ society; this was followed by ‘Salon des Amateurs’ (Marta Herford, 2009) and the ‘Coalition of Amateurs’ (MUDAM, Luxembourg, 2009). He was invited to show a retrospective of his work at Villa Noailles (France), creating the exhibition ‘Being There’. Parallel to this he has designed products and strategies for companies including Magis, Vitra and Alessi. Seymour is represented by Crone Galerie in Berlin and Gallery Kreo in Paris.
 His work has been exhibited in many museums worldwide, including the Design Museum in London, the Vitra Design Museum in Basel and Berlin and the Palais de Tokyo. His work can be found in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the ‘Fonds National d’ Art Contemporain’ France, the Centre Pompidou, Paris, the MAK in Vienna and the Mudam in Luxembourg.
 As an integral part of the philosophy of the Workshop, he teaches and gives workshops at the Royal College of Art in London, the Domus Academy in Milan, the ECAL in Lausanne, the HEAD Geneva, the Design Academy Eindhoven, the HfG in Karlsruhe, HBK Saarbrucken, the Vitra Design Workshops in France, UdK in Berlin, and the Strelka Institute, Moscow. 
In 2000 he was presented with the Dedalus Award for European Design and he received the Taro Okamoto Memorial Award for Contemporary Art in 2003.