Music is always a big part of our life. And we’re always looking for the new, also in music. So, over the past years we’ve made playlists of our favourite releases. Sometimes shared it here, sometimes only in an occasional newsletter. But always a strange mix between classic and electronic, latin and alternative, pop and jazz. This years highlights were Madlib, C. Tangana, L’Rain, and definitely the grand finale with Maya Beiser playing Philip Glass. Enjoy it on Apple Music, or over at Spotify. And the archive only on Apple Music here: 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016) [ Continue reading ]

Over the past years, Ashkan Honarvar has been one of the most shared artist here on Another Something. We’ve marveled at many of his projects, and have been following Ashkan for years. His latest project is another very exciting one; this time collaborating with Thomas Bradley, a garment designer working within the framework of costume for dance. The result is a series of 21 collages showcasing Thomas' 14 garments in the extraordinary Honarvar way. [ Continue reading ]

Our good friend Jess Henderson (pseud.) just published her first book Offline Matters, the less digital guide to creative work, and we’re beyond proud. Not because we designed it, but because this document feels like the so much needed wake-up-call, both confronting and insightful, inspiring and resonating. [ Continue reading ]

Earlier this year Rop van Mierlo and Remco van der Velden launched their collaborative project Wild Animals with the first edition called Tiger Merch. A beautiful collection of products consisting of mugs, sweaters, art prints, t-shirts, socks, a pyjama, a rug and even wrapping paper, all with the characteristically painted Tiger by Rop van Mierlo. [ Continue reading ]

In the heat of everything that has been taking place throughout the world it’s encouraging, inspiring and very educational to hear the many voices that need to be heard and understood and see the extraordinary initiatives all over the world in search for more equality. What touched us in particular is See In Black. A project where over 80 black photographers are selling original prints to raise funds for five non-profits that work to dismantle white supremacy and systematic oppression. See In Black’s “Black America Vol. 1” project is a highly-curated stock of images from photographers including Andre Wagner, Flo Ngala, and Renell Medrano that are on sale now. [ Continue reading ]

Way back (2008) we had a small online shop selling things we thought were worth selling, ranging from design notebooks to genius toys. One of the things we sold were hand sewn fabric footballs from Klas Ernflo. He moved from being a designer to illustrator to artist and with his latest work exhibited at Marta Los Angeles it feels all these worlds coming together in a beautiful way.
“Anorak” presents new large- scale, free-hanging textile paintings alongside several unique blanket- works and existing sculptures. The pieces, which variably suggest coverings for inclement weather, non-wearable shelter, and communal or familial garments, infer a soft network of voids and connectors atop canvas scrims that both describe and delineate space. [ Continue reading ]

As big fans of Noma, we’re interested in everything connected to them. So when we found out about Empirical Spirits it didn’t took long before the first bottles arrived in Amsterdam.
Empirical Spirits is a flavor company founded in 2017 by Restaurant noma alumni Lars Williams and Mark Emil Hermansen. [ Continue reading ]

'MIRROR RIM' by Alain Urrutia is a series of eleven paintings made to flip around, like a mirror, reflecting a fragmented and reconstructed alternative reality. Where he previously made super large paintings, these realistic small format black and white images, reframed and alienated from their historical value, are made to question our interpretations. The MIRROR RIM project was born from the idea of making two exhibitions in two different places that would change when moving from one space to the second one . The works from MIRROR RIM are composed symmetrically on their horizontal axis. The mirrored images we get in this way can be flipped 180 degrees. This is what happens when the exhibition is moved from one gallery to the second one. The paintings have been rotated so this second exhibition at Appleton Square in Lisbon, would work as the reflection of the first exhibition at the DIDAC Foundation in Santiago de Compostela. Hence the title of the exhibition, MIRROR RIM, a palindrome that refers to the edge of the mirror. [ Continue reading ]

Chris Cheung, creative director of the Hong Kong-based interdisciplinary creative studio XEX, reached out to us to share his latest art installation called 'Prismverse'. An immersive audiovisual installation to define a new dimension of light. As the title of the installation unveils it capture two core ideas; A prism as the medium that translates light on one hand, and a verse as the multi-timespace dimension. [ Continue reading ]

The Lange Leemstraat is one of Antwerp’s longer continuous streets. It starts on the edge of the city center and cuts straight through the Klein-Antwerpen area, which is popularly better known as (a significant part of) the Jewish neighborhood. The street slices the segment of the Belgian city between the Mechelsesteenweg, the Van Eycklei and the Belgiëlei, in two halfs — together forming a perfect triangle when seen on a map. Most of the tall but narrow houses in the street are at least four stories high and an overall multiethnic feel prevails next to the omnipresence of the orthodox Jewish community; when entering the street one is instantly struck by a metropolitan vibe. It feels like a miniature Brooklyn in the heart of Antwerp. For me, it forms one of the many (hidden) qualities of the city with a remarkable cultural diversity and unique urban structure that was only partly transformed for the modern age.

When continuing along the street from the center, somewhere halfway at the heart of Klein-Antwerpen, the impressive 'Résidence Isabelle' arises. The street is too narrow to actually see it before being in its proximity. All of a sudden it’s just there, forcing the street into an Y-crossing. The apartment building is the kind of beautiful architectural dissonance one finds throughout Antwerp. It doesn't match with its surrounding, but fits beautifully. In today’s digitally globalized world the concept (or illusion?) of visibility is more dominant and demanding then ever. In my eyes, an organically grown, bricolaged, environment like the Belgian harbor city still cultivates the opposite: a strong sensibility for the unknown and the mysterious through its partly chaotic, partly impractical, but always deeply intriguing urban DNA.

When somewhere last year, we discovered the work of a young Antwerp-based painter named Bendt Eyckermans, a very similar feeling of mystery hit. Who was behind these striking paintings, reminding of some of my favorite magic-realistic artists, yet with an incredible contemporary perspective and subject matter? After connecting through Instagram (bless the digital age too!), Bendt agreed to meet in his studio, which to my surprise is located right there in my favorite neighborhood of the city. [ Continue reading ]

Last weekend, the extraordinary Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa (MOCAA) in Cape Town, South Africa opened its doors for the public. The museum is set to become the world's most important exhibition space for African art, and with its iconic building by Heatherwick Studio it already draws the needed attention. The London-based firm transformed the building, both on the outside and inside, from a dead industrial structure into a mind-bending icon, instantly joining the Pantheon of some of the most beautiful museum buildings to be found all over the globe. [ Continue reading ]

Park Groot Vijversburg is a beautiful park located in the small town of Tytsjerk, in the northernmost province of The Netherlands named Friesland, which has been open to the public since 1892. Throughout the year, the park hosts events such as art exhibitions, musical performances, church services and excursions. With a rich history of inhabiting a variety of flora and fauna, the heart of Park Groot Vijversburg has always been a neoclassicist mansion in the center of the park. With the  number of visitors growing significantly in the last two decade, six years ago Tokyo-based architect Junya Ishigami and Marieke Kums of Rotterdam practice Studio Maks were given the assignment to design an accommodation next to the villa that would enable Park Groot Vijversburg to host the bigger crowds.

Last May was the official opening of the new addition, next to other significant changes and additions to the park, resulting in an inspirational new face for the public area, having become one of the more beautiful spots in the country. But above all, what stands out within the reinvigoration Park Groot Vijversburg is the extraordinary vision that was materialized by Ishigami and Kums, which consists of three intersecting glass corridors that grow out of a sunken, triangular-shaped visitors centre — forming a deeply inspirational structure that, in the words of Ishigami: "melts into the environment," and is among the most impressive we have seen erupted in The Netherlands in a long time. [ Continue reading ]

Three months ago, the inspirational Taipei-based space for art exhibitions, books and good coffee named Pon Ding presented a beautiful show named 'Gold and Green', which closed last month but remains a very inspirational cultural hybrid. The project is a collaborative effort by the established Austrian ceramic artist Matthias Kaiser and the emerging Taiwanese ceramic artist Hsian Jung Chen.

After chancing across some books about Chinese medicine, Kaiser became fascinated by the odd and unusual ingredients, like the organs of rare animals, and the kinky sounding remedies. The mysterious culture of traditional Chinese medicine sent him dreaming about other worlds. Kaiser’s works include the pieces fused with Chinese philosophy and his Asian experiences, and also the tools with gold, platinum or brass luster, which indicate the alchemy-like refining process of medicine. To Chen, Chinese medicine shops have a commonplace existence in his daily life, and he seldom ventures beyond their thresholds. Through reading and field research, Chen acquires more knowledge of Chinese medicine and gets inspirations from their stories, purposes, making process or appearance features. From their different points of view and experiences, these ceramic artists re-interpret, through their individual visual languages, the dwindling and partly-lost culture of traditional Chinese medicine.

The two artistic visions combined, resulted in a project that shows a clash of old and new; sharp and organic lines; smooth and rugged surfaces. Perfectly juxtaposed to form a fascinating selection of ceramics that tell the story of East and West exchange on more than one level with both artists clearly having found inspiration in the cultural tradition of the other, which in turn really inspires us. [ Continue reading ]

This week, we discovered another very inspirational set of creations that came to life in Paris, when it was presented by the brains behind it; renown creative studio Bonsoir Paris, who shared the extraordinary mod­u­lar trav­eling re­tail cases they have designed for the Dior Homme Made To Order Ex­o­tique Col­lec­tion 2016 two weeks ago on their website. Handcrafted exclusively from different types of exotic leather, the exquisite Dior Homme collection — a brainchild of creative director Kris van Assche — consists of jack­ets and ac­ces­sories, and needed a set of traveling cases that would preserve and protect the luxurious collection, while at the same time touch the same level of luxurious excellence and elegantly tease viewers with glimpses of the exclusive creations within. To create something that is safe, refined and has a teasing quality in its design, may sound like worlds apart — by moving into the futuristic aesthetic realm that reminds us of space travel, combined with playfully implementing storage and presentation elements, and maximally using the cosmetic elements of the sturdy materials in the most creative ways, Bonsoir Paris' work for Dior Homme is among some of the most inspirational we have seen in years.  [ Continue reading ]

We have been big fans of the work of Norway-based Iranian collage artist Ashkan Honarvar since his graduation days at the HKU University of the Arts in 2007. In the decade that followed, he has been steadily producing series after series on an extraordinary high level, dealing with reoccurring themes like colonialism, war, mass destruction, megalomania and other grotesque behavior. Always succeeding in creating imagery that is both intelligent and haunting, slightly repulsive but always captivating. In March of this year Ashkan presented another highly ambitious series of eight chapters named 'The Red Forest' that he has been releasing over the course of different weeks.

Within the new body of work, all of the different subseries touch the same ('Honarvar signature') aesthetic atmosphere and share the same underlying technique, but every chapter has its unique elements, telling different segments of the narrative. And although every chapter complements the strong emotion of the overarching concept, our favorite out of the body being the sixth, as shared below. The story behind 'The Red Forest' is based on the first seven years of Ashkan's life, growing up in Iran during the Iran-Iraq war, which at first sight suggests it is one of the most personal series till date. Yet the seamless fit of the series within the signature running through his portfolio, probably tells how personal his work always is, despite it referring to subjects that are much looser connected to the artist own history. One element within 'The Red Forest' that is a novelty is Ashkan's use of 3D renders, with the skulls and human figures (the female figure is Norwegian model Malena Morgwen) in this project, made with a 3D application Zbrush and then printed out and, as per usual, finished with handmade collage.

Both the subject-matter (as a point of reference for all of Ashkan's work) and this new layer of depth in the disfigurations of human representations, grabs us by the throat a little stronger than ever before, making 'The Red Forest' a significant development and possible important new chapter within the evolution of the brutally talented Ashkan Honarvar. Leaving us waiting eagerly where he will take these new artistic facets in the future.. [ Continue reading ]

A little over a year ago, the New York City-based Asya Geisberg Gallery opened a new exhibition named 'Quiet Earth' featuring new works by American collage artist Matthew Craven. Unfortunately we missed the inspirational display at the time, but recently our friend Merijn at …,staat pointed it out to us and we have been infatuated by the haunting works from that moment. The exhibition featured a series of works on paper, combined together rhythmically repeating a flattening of time and scale. In the imagery, Craven combines found images of antiquity with abstract hand-drawn patterns of ambiguous origin, and often subsequently painting walls to emphasize aesthetic choices that personalize his project. Ever-curious and controlled in his choice of placement and mark, as per usual the artist created enigmatic combinations, that despite (or maybe because) their encyclopedic nature, always succeed to engage our gaze and force curiosity about each specific reference and composition.

Craven always begins his imagery on an aged background, often vintage movie posters with yellowing tape, finding images in old books that are never glossy. As his collages compress millennia by placing the prehistoric next to the modern, they shift around time: the distance between the image’s creation and our grasp of its significance, the hours searching for appropriate materials, the cultivation of isolated fragments before evolving into Craven’s artistic universe. Several of the works use the landscape, colorful and present, to form a dialogue with the silent man-made artworks, adding an exciting visual layer. It seems as Craven is saying that we exist today because of our pre-historic past, and all cultures share the same planet. From a greater distance, the differences melt away (which too many people seem to forget now a days!), and just as all landscapes share underlying structure and forms (hence the quietness of the earth, possibly), so too do Craven’s stone temples, monuments, and patterns. The result is a highly fascinating series of work forming a quest through human history without ever losing our interest on an aesthetic level. We can't wait for more aesthetic journeys from the mind of Matthew Craven. [ Continue reading ]

At the end of last month, American artist and filmmaker Doug Aitken presented his latest incredible creation to the public, which at this moment is our favorite work he has created thus far. Part of the unique Desert X exhibition, that features a curated selection of site-specific works in the Coachella Valley in the Southern California desert, his creation named 'Mirage' is a installation utilizing the form of a ranch style suburban American house composed of reflective mirrored surfaces. It distills the recognizable and repetitious suburban home into the essence of its lines, reflecting, and disappearing into the vast western landscape. As movement was the driving force behind the settling of the American West, and the long flat vistas that stretched toward the Pacific shaped the ideology behind this iconic embodiment of American architecture, Aitken found inspiration in the history of the site to create his vision on reflection. The specific California Ranch Style, which is unique to the West, was informed by the ideas of legendary architect Frank Lloyd Wright, who believed that architecture should be both in and of the landscape.

In the 1920s and ‘30s a small inspired group of architects working in California and the West created the first suburban ranch style houses, fusing Wright’s fluid treatment of spaces with the simple one-story homes built by ranchers. After World War II, the ranch style’s streamlined simplicity gained popularity and commercial builders employed a simplified assembly line approach to create this efficient form, matching the rapid growth of the suburbs. The mass-produced ranch home became a familiar sight across the country, the style filling the American landscape as quickly as each new subdivision was built and was reinvented for the 21st century by Aitken as the ultimate tool for reflection on the rich past of this area. For those visiting Southern California before the 31st of October make sure not to miss this unique work in the middle of the desert, offering a unique perspective in a place where you are doomed to meet yourself anyway. [ Continue reading ]

We have been deeply fascinated by the traditional Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with lacquer dusted or mixed with powdered gold, silver, or platinum named 'kintsugi', from the moment we discovered it while researching for our optical project, which eventually became our neo-luxury brand Mottainai. Recently we discovered a next level of kintsugi-use, when we encountered the beautiful work of Korean artist Yeesookyung, who masterfully uses the technique to create incredible imperfect sculptures: biomorphic yet still elegant works, composed from mismatched porcelain through the centuries-old Japanese tradition. Her first series in the style, now 16 years old, titled 'Translated Vase' was inspired by a different artisan tradition, from her home country Korea, where porcelain works that are not deemed sublime are systematically destroyed. From that first series on, she has continued to make the fused pieces to growing international acclaim. Intrigued by these tossed aside works and shards, Yeesookyung began saving fragmented tea cups and pots rejected by contemporary masters. Honoring the works’ dismantled states, merging the unwanted works together in a way that heightens the beauty of their distress. In this way she blends diverse methods to form a contemporary process that evokes both the elegant designs of her homeland and the delicate rebuilding of damaged works in the Japanese tradition perfectly marrying aesthetics and craftsmanship. [ Continue reading ]

We have been off to a slow start here (not elsewhere), but with some very exciting meetings ahead in the coming months (stay tuned!), there will be an even stronger overal shift to ‘Less but Better’ in this year. Nevertheless, we will start picking up the pace from here, still sharing those things that continue to move us — today putting focus on the infamous Studio Job once more. As part of the Carpenters Workshop Gallery's ten-year anniversary programme, last week the gallery with three locations worldwide opened its Parisian space for the public to an exclusive exhibition by Job Smeets and Nynke Tynagel, which might very well be the most impressive display of their holistic practice till date.

Entitled ‘Here There Nowhere’ the exceptional solo show presents new creations, some of the most emblematic pieces that the duo created over the last few years and, very excitingly so, for the first time it opens up the drawings that form the basis for most physical creations to the public. The result is a highly diverse constellation of the fascinating creatures, iconic hybrid forms and ironic objects that punctuated with iconographic references — forming a kitsch and fanciful world where the object transcends functionality with everything bound together by the ‘Neo-Gothic’ aesthetic, masterfully championed by the Dutch power duo. When in Paris, ‘Here There Nowhere’ in a must visit! [ Continue reading ]

Last Saturday, one of our favorite Amsterdam-based galleries; The Ravestijn Gallery, opened a new show by Dutch collage artist Ruth van Beek named 'The Situation Room', which we feel ends a very interesting year of exhibitions, following other favorite shows by Vincent Fournier and Robin de Puy. The work of van Beek originates in her ever-growing archive. The images, mainly from old photo books, are her tools, source material and context. By folding, cutting, or adding pieces of painted paper, she rearranges and manipulates the image until her interventions reveal the universe that lay within them.

With her imagery, van Beek triggers the imagination of the viewer: passive human hands are animated, objects turn into characters, and abstract shapes come to life. The original image may have been taken out of context, but the familiar imagery –the formal photography of an instruction book, a clearly displayed object, or a staged action– remains recognizable, and thus speaks to our collective memory. Contrasting elements engage in conversation in van Beek’s work: the dead past coming to life; the literal and the abstract; displaying and concealing expressively; both the limitation and the endless possibility of an archive. Hereby, van Beek joins a new generation of artists that, by finding restriction in closed archives, offer a counterweight to the limitless availability of information. The constant organization of the world around her even gets a literal representation in van Beek’s work: the rearranging hands of instruction books appear and reappear, like a self-portrait of the artist as a creator. [ Continue reading ]

We've been great admirers of Dutch ceramic artist Carolein Smit for years and as we failed to write about the last time we were able to experience her haunting creations in real life during her The Flatland Gallery solo exhibition in 2015, we would like to revisit her latest presentation of new work that closed last October. Named 'Primordial Soup', the group exhibition at James Freeman Gallery in London, presented the work of Chris Berens, James Mortimer and Sam Branton, but what stood out (for us) beyond their paintings were the incredible new creations of Smit that brought the show the true emotional tactility as promised by the theme. This motive behind the curation of the four artists focussed on trusting instinct over reason, which in the eyes of Freeman has become a rarity nowadays, with the implication being that it is a lack of discipline to be tamed. Nevertheless, unfettered magical thinking still sits at the core of the artistic practice of numerous interesting artists, allowing those creators to tap into (more and more) hidden ideas, giving shape to things that don't make sense, but with a growing power as a subversive (and subconscious) reaction to the growing metrics-obsessed reality of today's world.

For us Carolein Smit's work forms the beating heart within this artistic genre that very likely will become more and more relevant in a society obsessing over numbers.   [ Continue reading ]

When we discovered the paintings of British artist Danny Fox, somewhere in the early Summer of last year, we experienced an excitement that hardly still occurs in that kind of encounters, especially in his discipline. His work, as much as the artist behind it, are of the hate-or-love-kind, and we fell head over heals for his uncompromising creations. At that time Fox had refocused the subject-matter of his unpolished paintings from painful self-experience to the more uplifting things he appreciates in life resulting in scenes with boxers, horses, cowboys, snakes, fruit, transsexuals, strippers or patterns reminiscent of ancient Greek decoration. It marked the start of a new phase, with the St Ives-born turning into a rapidly rising star in the art world, giving him the opportunity to travel beyond London, where he was based, moving to Los Angeles. An exhibition with new works opened last Friday, bringing Fox's work to Denmark for the first time, given the moniker 'A Spoon With The Bread Knife' — a reference to English rhyming slang where the bread knife translates to wife and spoon to cuddle. His new works show his familiar signature, through which he has created new captivating narratives, exploring a new richness in the complete image and bigger sizes in his canvasses, seemingly indicating that all this is only the start of what we can expect from one of our undisputed favorites in contemporary painting. [ Continue reading ]

When we became familiar with the work of Italian visual artist and director Yuri Ancarani, it touched a special place of interests that brought together both our deeply rooted love for cinema and still aesthetics. His immaculate yet very poetic portraiture of whatever subject matter he chooses to focus on, marries content and form in a seldom seen way. Whether it are the marble quarries of Monte Bettogli, where Ancarani portrayed the conduction of the process, the iconic San Siro stadium in Milano or a robotic surgery department in function: as seen through his lens a new kind of beauty evolves out of the ordinary (or unordinary).

Last Thursday, we were lucky enough to have seen his latest feature length documentary named 'The Challenge' at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam. The new project took Ancarani to the deserts of Qatar, where he both portrays the sport of falconry and the excessively rich who engage in it, without taking a stance, silently observing. Three years he explored this form of hunting in the field with his camera, which made it possible to capture the spirit of a tradition that today allows its practitioners to keep a close rapport with the desert, despite their predominantly urban lifestyle. The viewer's guide to how they cross that threshold is a falconer taking his birds to compete in a tournament. In the glaring light of an empty landscape, following flight lines and lures, the film recounts a strange kind of desert weekend, in which technological and anthropological microcosms hang in the air, like the falcon, drifting on the irreversible currents of images.

When in Amsterdam, don't miss this incredible work of art that will be shown at IDFA two more times: tonight and coming Saturday! [ Continue reading ]

On a day like this, which revealed the latest and till date most important piece of evidence of a still ongoing radical change in the fundamental requirements for the Western political class to be granted democratic power by the electorate — lacking the traditional need of a significant coherent political constructive vision, but on top of that not even the usual outspoken representation of inhabiting moral decency. In today's world empty signifiers have become the rule in the political jargon, proving to suffice as elementary communicational means to still mobilize a majority of the voters. Distributed digitally, the new system of communication functions by similar rules as that of (mostly constructed, sometimes organically erupted) online viral content: going for maximum instant impact without an intrinsic meaning or significant rooting in the relevant context.

It is safe to say that for us these times are rather confusing. With elections in The Netherlands (with Trump's racist/hairdo twin brother Wilders very likely to become the biggest party for the first time), but also France and Germany (with similar political movements) coming up, we might be heading for a rather nauseating new world order in the next five years and beyond. Ultra individualistic Western societies have become detached from ideology serving as the engine for politics as the means of managing a society. It feels that they have silently uprooted under a cloud of ultimate prosperity, having become significantly more polarized (stimulated by new digital paradigms) than ever before in modern times. Independent mass-communication is losing its significance, slowly transforming into (economical) niche media. A general sentiment of distrust towards truth as a value and the expert representing it, has grown deep roots and might very well be the indefinite heritage of postmodern thinking. Therewith, in any public debate today, beyond just in the political realm, it has become extremely complex to effectively portray important emotional universal truths with a constructive quality and actually reach a significant audience. The inherent noncomplex nature of reactive anger, fear, cynicism and scapegoating those who seem to be guilty just fit the profile of a viral message better.

Most of what's left, or maybe it just feels like that at the moment, is radical communication. The nuanced expressions hardly still land in the seemingly ever-shrinking attention span of the digitally conditioned human or more fundamentally not even make it through the algorithms to begin with. That makes now, maybe more than ever, a time to oppose the empty signifiers with radical subversive thought in the arts. It's time to shake up that slowly shaping new world order, because too many people seem to be dozing. To do just that, we revisit one of the people who's been doing this for years; Adam Stennett and his incredible body of work on paper, in recent years dealing explicitly with the theme of emergency in post-9/11 America. A new emergency might very well be just around the corner, let Stennett's work be a reminder for it not to happen. [ Continue reading ]