Last Friday, the doors of the beautiful Capital C building in Amsterdam have opened for BIG ART. The new initiative of curator Anne van der Zwaag presenting over 50 XL artworks by contemporary artists and designers, running until the 27th of November in what used to be the Diamant Exchange of the city. A unique mix of acclaimed names and upcoming talents, monumental paintings, drawings, large sculptures, big photos and huge installations. As one of the official partners of BIG ART we will present some of our favorite artists included in the curation of van der Zwaag. Today, we focus on a longtime favorite of ours: Amsterdam-based artist Marijn Akkermans, with whom we talked about the development in his work after graduating from the art academy 15 years ago, the pressures of modern society and the installation-like presentation of his incredible work at BIG ART. [ Continue reading ]

In the words of Satisfy founder Brice Partouche; "running is like meditation," which might very well the best medicine to keep your mind in the right place at the moment. In that particular realm, the Nike x Undercover Gyakusou Holiday 2016 collection just dropped as part of the ongoing collaboration between Nike and Undercover's Jun Takahashi, that has entered its sixth year. Each Gyakusou collection builds upon the last, blending innovation with Takahashi’s creative punk spirit and athletic sensibilities. The new collection notably reflects Nike’s approach to transformative design, as select items are designed to reduce distraction by being easily packable. Since the very beginning, Takahashi made the Gyakusou color palette to blend well with both the urban and natural landscape using earthy colors and the traditional colors of Japan, this season also debuting some contrasting colors in the palette. Another first time is the fact that Takahashi features in the lookbook created for the new collection. Next to the photography, an impressive video was additionally produced, in which the Japanese visionary expresses his vision for what he has been aiming to create with Gyakusou in the last six years. Very impressive, if you would ask us. [ Continue reading ]

Last month, American photographer Jonathan Levitt, together with Los Angeles-based publisher Snail Press, released a new beautiful printed gem named 'Mawooshen: Life and Landscape of the Maritime Archaic', featuring over 100 carefully selected film photographs taken over the last 10 years. The name of the book refers all the way back to 1605, when British Captain George Waymouth explored what we now know as Midcoast Maine, in an expedition that included a certain gentleman named James Rosier, who wrote a detailed account that was published in England. During this exploration Waymouth and his men kidnapped five Natives and took them to England. The captives reportedly called their homeland Mawooshen. With his book, inspired by Paleolithic animism, western natural history, and shadow archaeology, Levitt creates and alter-world, named after the original native moniker of the lands, through deeply fascinating photographs of geography, plant and animal life, people, and built objects. All of the images are unstaged, analog, and accompanied by fragments of description. The photographs are arranged according to the seasons in which they were taken and span three cycles. The effect is cumulative and modal like a chant. By telling the story of 'Mawooshen' cyclically and ending with the ellipsis of a third spring, Levitt’s cosmology pushes against the linear, eschatological myth of western culture. [ Continue reading ]

After last weekend's highly anticipated (finally!) launch of Amsterdam-based perfume house Abel's new five piece vita odor collection and the accompanying official presentation of the redefined strategy, repositioning of the brand and completely restyled identity, which we worked on over the course of the last twelve months (everything on that later this week) — we first want to shed some well deserved light on the very talented and very lovely Paris-based Sophie Tajan, who was responsible for the photography in the project.

We first encountered her work while researching what direction the visual language for Abel should move towards, in order to distinctively communicate on more than one level what the 100% natural fragrances stand for. The fit with Tajan's artistic vision felt instantly perfect. With a portfolio consisting of part immaculate still life, part abstract documentary and part fashion photography: Tajan succeeds in all three areas. She creates captivating photographs throughout, photographing in natural light, creating imagery in a soft muted color palette and exciting shades of black, gray and white. Particularly her still life experimentations with light, distortions and reflections grabbed our attention and made her the undisputed perfect collaborator for what were trying to create. Looking back today, we can only conclude how happy we are with the outcome and look forward to see what's next for the greatly talented Sophie.

See all of Sophie's work for Abel on their new website. [ Continue reading ]

This coming Friday, the doors of the beautiful Capital C building in Amsterdam will open for BIG ART. The exciting new initiative of curator Anne van der Zwaag presents over 50 XL artworks by contemporary artists and designers and will run for 10 days in what used to be the Diamant Exchange of the city. A unique mix of acclaimed names and upcoming talents, monumental paintings, drawings, large sculptures, big photos and huge installations. As one of the official partners of BIG ART we will present some of our favorite artists included in the curation of van der Zwaag. Starting with Rotterdam-based painter Katinka Lampe, with whom we discussed the democratization of the contemporary visual culture, the rise of artificial self-representation and how this is reflected back in her haunting distorted paintings of young human figures. [ 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 ]

Evidently part of the Pantheon of the most important painters of the 20th century, Spanish artist Pablo Picasso also created sculptures throughout his life that were as innovative as they were (and still are!) influential. After the MoMA in New York and the Musée national Picasso-Paris, BOZAR/Centre for Fine Arts in Brussels has just opened the next chapter of the exhibition, bringing together 80 of Picasso’s sculptures for the very first retrospective of the artist’s sculptures in Belgium. After having seen it ourselves last Sunday (the exhibition opened on 25 October 2016: Picasso’s birthday), it is safe to say that the exhibition will be among our favorites of the year, marvelously showcasing the extraordinary scope of the artistic vision of Picasso and revealing the inspirational development in finding the right 3D equivalent of his canvas-bound painted expressions.

'Picasso. Sculptures' is laid out in a chronological and thematic circuit elaborated in collaboration with the former host of the biggest part of the curation; Musée national Picasso-Paris — the sculptures positioned into a dialogue with around twenty of his canvases, around fifteen ceramics, and objets d’art from non-European cultures which belonged to his personal collection. Without a doubt, Picasso will always be first remembered as the prolific and groundbreaking painter. However, 'Picasso. Sculptures' incredibly presents Picasso the sculptor, having created some of the most radical forms in modern sculpture, making those works just as profoundly influential and inspirational today. [ Continue reading ]