Bench Players

A series of failed, rejected, or unused animals from Rop van Mierlo’s archive; the reserve bench animals.

Rop van Mierlo works with various mediums but starts his process mostly with drawings or paintings. Control—or the absence of it—is an important part of his work. He is best known for his picture book Wild Animals, which won a Dutch Design Award in 2011. Van Mierlo is intrigued by the human need to control nature. Using a wet-on-wet technique, he paints animals that he can’t control.