On the 8th of September the incredible Dutch ceramic artist Carolein Smit will open her exhibition 'Death and the Maiden' at the newly opened Flatland Gallery in Amsterdam. The work of the Academy of fine arts, St. Joost graduate is known for its evocative postures which inhabit at the same time a certain vulnerability. Much of her attention in her statues goes to the skin: it could be covered with thorns, holes, hairs, water drops, or a pattern of veins. The aesthetic created by these choices has a strong connection to the magic-realistic tradition in the arts. Carolein borrows themes from classic mythology and biblical tales, such as greed, power and impotence, vanity, perishableness and death. Often her sculptures enclose elements like those we find in vanitas. [ Continue reading ]
Recently the newly graduated designer Klara Petersén was brought to our attention. This Swedish designer has, for her Masters, been studying the versatility of uncoated vegetable natural leather which she exclusively gets at the tannery Tärnsjö Garveri in Tärnsjö, Sweden. Using vegetable leather gives her the possibility to harden the leather after it's been soaked in water. In a process in which the designer vacuums the wet leather onto an object and heating it afterwards, Petersén is able to catch any shape wrapped in the leather. [ Continue reading ]
Something for a rainy sunday afternoon like this: A new publication from a corner of Europe where we’d least expect it from: Bucharest, Romania. Creative director Stefan Trifan started an art, culture and fashion magazine bringing together the best ideas and most wonderful people of Romania. Featuring interviews,… [ Continue reading ]
A new issue of Modern Matter magazine, covering a nice mix of technology, style and conceptual art, was released last weak. In this 230 pages heavy issue an exclusive cover-shoot by Jurgen Teller. A conversation between Hans Ulrich Obrist and Dimitar Sasselov about art and astronomy. John Baldessari… [ Continue reading ]
During Art Basel, the Vitra Design Museum opened an exposition dedicated to a number of innovative Dutch designers. The designers were invited to join a partner from the region in developing a design project. The spectrum of partners ranged from the molecular biology laboratory of the firm Roche to the only female charcoal maker in Switzerland.
Studio Wieki Somers teamed up with chocolatier Rafael Mutter to create the ‘Chocolate Mill', a large cylindrical block of chocolate from which delicate rosettes can be shaved off with a crank-turned blade. Various patterns are integrated into the block using different types of chocolate, creating a flipbook effect as the layers are scraped off. [ Continue reading ]
The three books, the Russian Criminal Tattoo Encyclopaedia I, II and III published by Fuel, are one of our favorites. The books, filled with the crazy, absurd and often very violent tattoo drawings by Danzig Baldaev are going into an exhibition now. Between 1948-1986, during his career as a prison guard,… [ Continue reading ]
Copenhagen-based design agency Dyhr.Hagen recently published FAT Magazine. A beautifully made magazine with an international outlook and global scope. Fat stands for Fashion, Art, Type & contemporary genres that offer mutual inspiration. Sounds like everything we love! The second issue, issue B, features some lovely… [ Continue reading ]
Art director and publisher Vimmerby Rinkeby just published a book featuring the work of the American artist Landon Metz. Metz was born in 1985 in Phoenix, Arizona and currently lives and works in New York City. His work has been exhibited throughout the U.S. and in… [ Continue reading ]
I stumbled upon this amazing work by New York and San Francisco based artist Tauba Auerbach. Two crazy books, digital offset printing, Mohawk superfine paper, 55 pages, hand painted edges. I would love to have these two books in our studio, to read now and then, just to… [ Continue reading ]
The London based set designers duo Anna Fulmine and Victoria Shahrokh, better known as Lightning & Kinglyface, created this stunning installation, the Tenth Cranial Nerve, for Nomad for a series of events, in the Old Vic tunnels. Inspired by the woodcuts of animal dissections by the Greek physician… [ Continue reading ]
Acne just released their 13th issue of the Acne Paper, themed ‘The Body’. A beautiful associative document ‘from the manifestations of our esteem for physical beauty to philosophical metaphors for corporal complexity and spiritual ideas; from the mythological and the divine to the disturbing and the macabre…Instead of… [ Continue reading ]
I completely missed the online update of Purple and just found out that the Purple Fashion Magazine is now available online, for free. It is designed in a really smart way, to keep the magazine experience but give you more reading and viewing pleasure. Some real next level magazine design. [ Continue reading ]
I always like to combine things from different worlds. It creates some kind of strange energy, weird connections and unique insights, just as John Jay said about the ‘unusual cultures where you don’t belong’… Here’s one of these things that don’t belong together, but I’d love to see them together!… [ Continue reading ]
We're a huge fan of the work of Rotterdam based artist Anouk Griffioen. After her collaboration with Annemarieke van Drimmelen where photography and illustration came together in beautiful collages and oversized prints she continued that that theme and created a series of new works. We very much love the oversized pieces of paper and canvas with thick black lines, smudges and spaces, abstract and layered drawings. [ Continue reading ]
When libraries are going digital thousands and thousands of books and encyclopedias are becoming worthless piles of paper. Multidisciplinary artist Guy Laramee started to use these books for his sculptures of carved book landscapes and structures entitled Biblios and The Great Wall. Beautifully detailed landscapes, mountains and ancient structures are carved out of the paper like thin layers of soil and stone in an almost unreal scale. Truly amazing! [ Continue reading ]
‘Collection of light‘ by ‘Human since 1982‘ is simply a collection of LEDs which together constitute a lamp in itself. The aim is to create an aura of a real collection (similar to a collection of insects) and expose each illuminant as a worthy industrial product. [ Continue reading ]
The German Freunde von Freunden (friends of friends) visited the Boros residence – a former Second World War air raid shelter built in 1942 in central Berlin. An amazing place where Christian and his wife, Karen, live with their son between a dazzling collection of art and installations… [ Continue reading ]
We love books, especially when they are really well made. Editions Bessard was started by the Parisian photographer Pierre Bessard (know for his amazing book ‘Wuhan Boiler Company Workers‘) and is now growing into one of those publishers with an amazing portfolio of publications, limited editions… [ Continue reading ]
Costume National asked Sergei Sviatchenko from Close Up & Private to give his take on the Autumn/Winter ’11/’12 collection. The result is “The Beetles News”. In a mix of photography and collage the style is inspired on a concert back… [ Continue reading ]
Reykjavík based designer Högni Valur Högnason finished the Icelandic Academy of the Arts with ‘To die will be an awfully big adventure’. The project is about the deaths in our life and consist of three pieces: The first one is about childish innocence, black dripping game… [ Continue reading ]
Highlight Gallery in San Francisco will open Belgian artist Renato Nicolodi’s first solo exhibition in the United States next week. The dark, bold and colossal architectonic sculptures all build around the theme of Libido Moriendi, a Latin phrase that, like Nicolodi’s work, is situated between classical… [ Continue reading ]
Just found out about the Istanbul based artist Kerem Ozan Bayraktar and his amazing miniature installations. His series ‘Stasis’ of miniatures are stunning scale models of a bike frozen in a piece of ice, the Hindenburg Airship, a part of bisected F-86 Sabre Aircraft, a rusty… [ Continue reading ]
Portland based artist and printmaker Alyson Provax made this beautiful series of works called ‘The Durations’. A series of hand printed silkscreen monotypes loosely based on perception of time as filtered through awkward language. Beautiful type, washy, aquarelle-like faded words, printed on heavy weight paper. Be sure to… [ Continue reading ]
The Dutch publisher Roma Publication just published this amazing little book ‘Looking at Trees’ by Irene Kopelman. In subtile dots and fragile lines she puts on paper the essence of a tree in two series of water color drawings over 40 pages. In an edition of… [ Continue reading ]