My friend and inspirator on ultra distance cycling; Yorit Kluitman, is about to finish a long time project, his 'Bicycle Landscape: cycling across all 388 Dutch municipalities'. Started back in 2011 and at this moment filling the last gaps, Yorit cycled through all 388 Dutch municipalities, photographing the landscape between cities and villages, exclusive of people and buildings: a cross section of the organized Netherlands.

“I gave myself six years to cycle across all municipalities. Within this time-frame I will be visiting as many different areas as possible. Equipped with a camera, I research the functionality, the rhythm, the composition, the lines, the form and the order of the Dutch landscape.” [ 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. [ 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. [ Continue reading ]

It's a special year for, what we feel is, one of the most inspiring people working in fashion today; Jean Touitou, and his ever-relevant brainchild A.P.C. (designed with a collective spirit — hence: “Atelier de Production et de Création”). Started as a reaction to the loudness of the Eighties, Touitou created his minimalist fashion brand exactly 30 years ago. To eventually grew into an unprecedented platform, which beyond its own brand has backed smaller counterparts like Louis W., Vanessa Seward and Outdoor Voices. To this day, A.P.C. continues to be an important voice, despite the fact that the fashion ecosystem has changed completely throughout the last two decades shaped by globalization. Where other minimalist icons have silently lost relevance or left (into the art world, for instance) somewhere during the last decade — Touitou and his team continue to cater to a worldwide cult following through clean designed lines and a consistent price point. To celebrate the extraordinary milestone, a new sub-collection named 'Hiver ’87' was created, which is just about to drop at the different stores worldwide, but beyond fashion Touitou also took on the ambitious task to truly reflect (during the course of the last 1,5 years) on 30 years of A.P.C. in a deeply compelling book named 'A.P.C. Transmission', holding 544 pages (published by Phaidon) that will be released on the 7th of September. [ Continue reading ]

We mentioned his name in last week's post on Rushemy Botter, who found the key inspiration for his 'Fish or Fight' collection on Curaçao  — freshly graduated Gilleam Trapenberg was born and bred in the Caribbean on the former Dutch colony (now part of the Kingdom) from where he came to The Netherlands after high school to study photography six years ago. Or basically, according to Gilleam, he came to study anything in The Netherlands despite his deep love for his home, and he knew photography would be the only direction he was really interested in to pull through. After applying to several academies, he ended up in The Hague at the Royal Academy of the Arts and last month he said his final goodbye to the school with our favorite graduation project of 2017 named 'Big Papi'. [ Continue reading ]

There is a significant need for new personal stories in today’s hype-driven, free-for-all fashion world. Despite a rather boring tradition in that realm, some of the names we find interesting and who have the potential to do just that come from The Netherlands. Following in the footsteps of Paul Helbers and Sebastiaan Pieter—both talented Dutch designers with young labels (based outside of The Netherlands)—last month’s Royal Academy of Antwerp graduate Rushemy Botter seems to be next in line to step up. His graduation collection (Autumn/Winter 2018), titled Fish or Fight, marked Botter’s debut during last week’s Amsterdam Fashion Week. However, we had already seized the opportunity to briefly meet the rising star one day after his graduation show in Antwerp at the beginning of June. [ Continue reading ]

After having seen it ourselves this afternoon, for those in and around Berlin, make sure to drop by the incredible KÖNIG GALERIE to witness German artist Julian Rosefeldt’s first solo exhibition at the gallery. On view in the nave of former Catholic church St. Agnes is his large video installation titled 'In the Land of Drought' that was filmed in Morocco and the Ruhr area. A condensed version of Rosefeldt’s filmic interpretation of Joseph Haydn’s 'The Creation', 'In the Land of Drought'  confronts the relationship between man and his impact on the world. Set to atmospheric sounds and a pulsating hum, the 43-minute piece looks back from an imagined future upon the post-Anthropocene: the aftermath of significant human influence on Earth. An army of scientists appear to investigate the archaeological remnants of civilization after humanity has made itself extinct. Shot entirely using a drone, Rosefeldt’s images hover meditatively over the desolate landscape and ruins. Connoting surveillance, the drone’s bird’s eye view removes human perspective with us onlookers kept at a distance throughout. Increasingly, more figures dressed in white lab suits emerge to inspect the ruins of civilization – which are in fact abandoned film sets close to the Moroccan Atlas Mountains. [ Continue reading ]