A beautiful silkscreen printed map of The Northern Sky. Limited to 500 pieces, handprinted and -numbered. [ Continue reading ]

Over the past year we've been working on an exhibition on denim which opened last week in the Centraal Museum, Utrecht, the Netherlands. Putting together 350 years of denim history into a more than 100 meter long indigo timeline. A rich history including classic paintings from 'The Master of the Blue Jeans' and old sample books dating back to the 18th century, to the designs of Chanel, Jean Paul Gaultier, Maison Martin Margiela, Marithé + François Girbaud and Yves Saint Laurent - and one of the oldest Levi's and Lee jeans to Momotaro, Atelier Tossijn, Naked & Famous and Rapha - it's all there.
We've created a more than 100 meters long cabinet, starting like a loom in an almost black indigo colour, morphing to slate blue and finally ending in a bright white workshop. A three-dimensional timeline showing the rich history of 350 years of Blue Jeans. The exhibition is accompanied with a book we've designed together with Studio wilfredtimo, which will be available at Tenue de Nîmes (a.o.) anytime soon.

Blue Jeans — 23 November 2012 until 10 March 2013,
Centraal Museum, Nicolaaskerkhof 10, Utrecht, the Netherlands, open Tue - Sun 11.00h – 17.00h

For more images click here >
And more on Blue Jeans at the Centraal Museum after the click > [ Continue reading ]

Freunde von Freunden keeps on feeding us with beautifully shot portraits and inspiring interviews with creative people from all over the world. They’ve just put online the portrait of Barcelona based Ceramist Xavi Mañosa. Inherited the tradition from his father and now investigating the connection… [ Continue reading ]

'Everything goes right and left if you want it' is the title of the first publication on Sergei Sviatchenko, the good man behind Close Up and Private. The Berlin-based publisher Gestalten released this beautiful book featuring Sviatchenko's modern collages and keen eye on colour. "In the world of contemporary art, Sviatchenko is a provocateur. He draws on and harnesses all of the cultural tides he has experienced in 40 years of image-making. Sviatchenko’s oeuvre spans the known and the unimaginable. It cuts through the boundaries of traditional and contemporary visuals to merge pop culture with politics, personal memory with collective histories, and architecture and science with the logic of dreams." [ Continue reading ]

When Freunde von Freunden asked me who to visit when in the Netherlands, the first person that popped in mind was Nanna van Blaaderen. The Dutch textile and fashion designer, known for her almost sculptural knitted pieces, welcomed the FvF crew in her house and studio - resulting in a page long interview and and inspiring look behind the scenes and inspirations of Nanna. [ Continue reading ]

Today NOWNESS shared this super inspiring preview of Loris Gréaud's upcoming project: The Snorks, a concert for creatures. "The initial inspiration for the project lies in the idea that creatures would be living on our planet, their aesthetical and behavioural features matching an alien fantasy in every aspect, thereby awaking the desire of communicating with those "creatures". What if they live within our oceans, major component of our eco-system, could we get in touch with them?... Here begins an artistic journey and production that will last 36 months. An unusual temporality that can be understood through the following paradox: we have the ability to go on the Moon, to date the presence of water on Mars, yet we barely know anything about what composes the tremendous majority of the Earth... [ Continue reading ]

At the in retrospect seen successful Unseen photo fair, we discovered another series of photographs we really like. Dutch photographer Diana Scherer documented an archive of wild flowers, which she grew herself, in her series Nurture Studies which were on display at the stand of the Seelevel Gallery. In the spring of 2010 Scherer decided to fill her balcony with garden soil and planted wild flowers in vases within it. When the flowers were full-grown after six months the photographer removed them from the soil and broke the vases away, exposing the roots that retain the shape as an evocation of the now absent vase. [ Continue reading ]

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 ]