“Nimbus Royal West”

Berndnaut Smilde's work consists of installations, sculptures and photographs. Using his everyday surroundings and spaces as motifs, Smilde is interested in the temporal nature of construction and deconstruction.

His work refers both to the physical state of a building and to moments of revelation in which he portrays the hope or fragility of the constructive events that draw him. Smilde analyzes spaces and their appearance and selects them to investigate their unique details and features. His artistic perspective often reflects on duality, with questions about “inside and outside,” temporality, scale, and the function of materials and architectural elements.

He has exhibited in several cities in the Netherlands and also in Toronto, Taipei, Istanbul, Dublin, Paris, London and San Francisco. In 2013, he opened his first large-scale solo exhibition: the Land of Tomorrow in Louisville, USA. In the same year, he was also invited to curate an exhibition at the Bonnefantenmuseum in Maastricht.

He was an artist in residence at the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin in 2008. Smilde received his BA in 2001 from the Minerva Academy and his MA in 2005 from the Frank Mohr Institute, both in the Netherlands. His Nimbus series was recognized by TIME Magazine as one of the "Top Ten Inventions of 2012".