Jerszy Seymour Design Workshop was founded in Berlin in 2004. Committed to looking at new forms of mutual and communal life processes, the studio focuses on the production of objects, installations, exhibitions, and situations. Working in an expanded context that combines art, design and activism, the question of how to shape our social, political, and ecological reality is of critical concern. Jerszy Seymour Design Workshop engages an entangled or ‘dirty’ approach, relying as much on engineering and material exploration as on humour and poetics, to imagine future-orientated ways of living.

Jerszy Seymour sees design as the creation of situations whose goal is the transformation of reality. His work is defined by the idea of the Non-Gesamt Gesamt Kunstwerk, the Every-topia, and a quixotic form of humour as an antidote to dogma. He positions his role as a designer as a research into contemporary utopian possibilities and alternative world building strategies through the creation of both practical and symbolic situations in order to formulate alternative systems and ways of being, and for them to act as living unauthorised models in a decentralised and autonomous reality in themselves.

His work has been presented in many museums and institutions and is held in many permanent collections including the Centre Georges Pompidou, the MAK Vienna, Kunsthaus Glarus, the Vitra Design Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, the Neue Sammlung – Pinakothek der Moderne Munich, Marta Herford, Mudam Luxembourg, Fondation Lafayette and the Fonds National d’ Art Contemporain France. In parallel he has taught and given lectures and workshops at many schools including the Royal College of Art, UdK , Domus Academy, La Sapienza, Eindhoven Academy, Berlin Program for Artists, Hfg Karlsruhe and Saarbrucken, Cranbrook Academy, Ecal Lausanne and the HEAD in Geneva. Since 2011, he is co-founder and director of the Dirty Art Department, a radical masters program in art and design, at the Sandberg Institute in Amsterdam.

In 2021, he created the exhibition ‘Life on Planet Orsimanirana’ at the M&KG Hamburg, together with the Macao Collective in Milan, as a symbolic vision of a world we would want to live in.

Solo
Life on Planet Orsimanirana, MK&G, Hamburg, 2021
O.M.R. Sanitary Unit #1, Fondation d’enterprise Martell, Cognac, 2020
Sacred Mountain, Etage Projects, Copenhagen, 2019
Lucky Larry’s Cosmic Commune, St. Etienne, 2017
The Committee for Happy Endings, Bratislava, 2016
Amateur Workshop #5, Sysiphus on Tour, Platform, Munich, 2015
The Universe Want To Play, Gallerie Crone, Berlin, 2013
(Anti-) Social Vulcano, Vitra Design Museum, Weil am Rhein, 2012
Being There, Villa Noailles, France, 2009
Coalition of Amateurs, MUDAM, Luxembourg, 2009
Salon des Amateurs, MARTA Herford, 2009
The First Supper, MAK Vienna, 2008
The Brussels Brain, Design Brussels, 2005
Tape: Made to Measure, Galerie Tissi, Berlin, 2005
Scum Skate, Tokyo Design Block, Tokyo, 2004
Mo´ Scum, Diesel Gallery, New York, 2004
Welcome to Scum City Part II, Idee, Tokyo, 2003
Tape, Palais de Tokyo, Paris, 2003
Welcome to Scum City, Gallery Facsimile, Salone di Mobile, Milan, 2003
Lowlife, Gallery Kreo, Paris, 2003
Bonnie + Clyde, The Design Museum, London, 2002
House in a Box, Salone di Mobile, Milan, 2002

Group
Places To Be, Fondation d’enterprise Martell, Cognac, 2020
Masters of Disguise, Seeds Gallery, London, 2019
Do-It-Yourself-Design, Bröhan Museum, Berlin, 2016
Residency in Nature, Småland, Sweden, 2016
Kloental Triennale, Kunsthaus Glarus, Switzerland, 2014
Merzen, HEAD – haute ecole d’art et de design, Geneva, Switzerland, 2014
Playing Favourites Part II, Design Exchange, Toronto, 2013
Nomadic Furniture 3.0, MAK, Vienna, 2013
Totem and Taboo, MuseumsQuartier, Vienna, 2011
Space for Fantasy, Galerie des Galeries, Paris, 2010
Experimenta 09, Museu da Electricidade, Lisbon, 2009
Retreat, Fort Asperen, 2009
Amateur Furniture, Esther Schipper Gallery, Berlin, 2009
Formless Furniture, MAK, Vienna, 2008
Vitra Edition, Vitra Campus, Weil am Rhein, 2007
My Home, Vitra Design Museum, Weil am Rhein, 2007
Somewhere Totally Else, European Design Biennale, Design Museum, London 2003
Living in Motion, Vitra Design Museum, Weil am Rhein, 2002
Smash, Salone Di Mobile, Milan, 2001
Design Now, The Design Museum, London, 2001