In the late ’80s, he began arranging beer crates and concrete blocks in Minimalist-inspired stacks and then made modular furniture and boxlike sinks, tubs and toilets, which he presented in his first solo show, in 1988 at Galerie Fons Welters, Amsterdam. These modestly scaled early efforts are the foundation of AVL’s predominantly straightforward, even primitive, aesthetic—there are never more features than absolutely necessary. With its emphasis on efficiency and portability, his work brings to mind Andrea Zittel’s Living Units—trunks that open and unfold into full-size rooms—but at its most functional, his output most readily suggests that of his Dutch forebear Gerrit Rietveld, whose ultrasimple plywood-and-bolts De Stijl designs are more sculpture than furniture and whom van Lieshout cites as an early influence. As for contemporary Dutch design, “it’s too easy,” he says. “It’s not conceptual enough. An artwork should be a little bit unexplainable.” By the 1990s, the scale of his works had increased, and so had the number of commissions. At one point, someone called up and asked if he needed an intern. The studio grew from there.

Since van Lieshout emerged onto the art scene, critics have tried to sort out whether his antiestablishment stance is irony-free or whether he’s a provocateur who’s thumbing his nose at the very audiences who support him. Is this art a little too autonomous, they wonder, maybe a bit too lawless to be taken seriously? “To say that an artist is merely a provocateur is disparaging,” says the London dealer Michael Hue-William, whose Albion gallery has represented van Lieshout since 2007 (he is represented in New York by Tanya Bonakdar Gallery). “It’s a mistake to dismiss his work that way. Joep is fantastically creative. He’s a force of nature really.” Hue-William adds that the works have been snapped up by “an amazingly diverse group of collectors.” The gallerist matches his clients in enthusiasm, so much so that he decided to expand Albion’s upcoming AVL show, which opens in July, to include a few large pieces that will be installed outdoors in addition to a group of new ink-on-canvas works.

Some of those two-dimensional pieces represent figures; others are renderings of structures. “Yesterday,” van Lieshout says, “I made a painting of the Virgin Mary surrounded by some believers.” There’s even a Deposition, based on Rogier van der Weyden’s famous 15th-century composition. Also in progress is a commission for some sculptures in a botanical garden in Mexico.

But what has been occupying much of his and AVL’s time lately is Slave City, an ongoing body of work, including drawings, small models and full-size constructions, based on a fictional metropolis, population 200,000. In this high-functioning dystopia, the residents, known as participants, are subject to a strict regimen of work, relaxation and sleep. The cooperative community produces its own food and operates a power plant, a university, an airport and even brothels. Freedom is sacrificed for self-sufficiency. As rendered in wall-mounted wood-and-metal sculptures, the Call Center Units, 2005, where the male residents, represented by small white-clay figures, work and sleep in very close quarters, bears a disturbing resemblance to the hold of a slave ship or the barracks of a Nazi death camp.

Slave City “plays with reality as well as history,” says van Lieshout. “It’s ambiguous—the architecture is beautiful, but at the same time, it’s something horrible. Parts of it look like a concentration camp. It’s also a metaphor for so many things: the economy, world population, endless consumption.” Several new components of Slave City—among them, a headquarters building and a model for the world’s largest mall—will be included in two upcoming exhibitions in Germany, the first at the Museum Folkwang, in Essen, from April 25 through July 6, and a larger retrospective opening in September at the Ludwig Forum für Internationale Kunst, Aachen.