Recently we stumbled upon the truly magnificent work of Los Angeles-based photographer Lauren Marsolier. The French-born creates extraordinary images that are convincingly real using multiple photographs, unrelated fragments of the outside world collected over time in a variety of locations. Months or years often separate the capture of elements juxtaposed in her landscapes; a technique reminiscent of the art of painting. Her work probes the mental process of transition - hence its moniker - a particular phase when our parameters of perception shift, when we suddenly don't see ourselves, our environment, or our life quite the same way we used to. These transitional periods often feel like being in a place one knows, but can't quite identify. We can't stop gazing at these remarkable photographs, which seem to tell deep stories of solitude and show a clinical beauty which feels both surreal and keeps haunting us. [ Continue reading ]
In our eyes Danny Fox is one of the most exciting names who has arrived in the London art scene in recent years. The artist with the appearance of an outlaw biker is an autodidact who found his interest in painting somewhere in his mid teens, inspired by the work of Alfred Wallis, who like Fox lived in St. Ives. Over the years he created a style which is unpolished and uncompromising, showing elements of early Modernist art, the graffiti aesthetic and a color palette that reminds of African art. Both the figurative, symbolic and decorative elements are slapped with great speed onto the canvas as if they were a sheet of flash tattoos (as immortalized on the artist's own skin for instance). Fox's figures represent boxers, horses, cowboys, snakes, fruit, transsexuals, strippers or patterns reminiscent of ancient Greek decoration, with everything blending together perfectly in the artist’s fascinating raw narratives, rooting directly from Fox's own memory or personal history. [ Continue reading ]
To celebrate his now iconic minimalist sneaker's 10th anniversary, in January 2014 one of our favorite designers and tastemakers around; Erik Schedin teamed up with Comme des Garçons Shirt to re-release the white leather model with unique added graphics. Another version with the colorway option inverted was released soon afterwards using black as the primary color of choice for the low-rise model with white graphics. And now the Swede and Comme des Garçons Shirt return and continue their great collaboration for a third rendition, this time in color: having created the sneaker in a sharp shade of blue and a beautiful deep green with the identical black graphics as its predecessors. We love these beautiful new styles of one of the cleanest sneaker around! [ Continue reading ]
This week a new inspirational project was launched by Rapha. After the brand was one of the original backers of Rouleur magazine back in 2006, it now introduces an all new cycling magazine on its own named Mondial. The elegant and highly inspirational 160-page debut issue is available to Rapha Cycling Club members now, and will be available for the rest of the world in one week. Mondial aims to expand the idea of what road cycling is and what the beautiful sport can be. It will feature incisive longform writing and elegant photography which is one of the fortes of Rapha in the first place. In Mondial you will find familiar cycling topics given a fresh new treatment, while a cycling viewpoint is brought to wider cultural subjects, thus broadening the sport’s reference points. We have been eagerly waiting on a publication like Mondial and applaud how it is done so incredibly well, looking forward to what the inspirational new project will bring in the future! [ Continue reading ]
For the latest edition of inspirational The Collective Quarterly, it has placed its exploratory gaze on the Mad River valley - officially known as the Winooski River - in Vermont, USA, visiting towns like Warren, Waitsfield, Moretown, Fayston, and Duxbury; an area famous for its architectural experimentations. There are more architects per capita in Warren than anywhere else in the United States. Throughout the ’60s and ’70s, these highly creative designers created experimental constructions on Prickly Mountain, heralding the arrival of the design/build movement, which was insightfully caught in the magazine's photographic story on the subject. Other chapters in the issue focus on; extreme sports like kayaking, big-air huck fests in sleds, and cliff-jumping at near-suicidal heights; a man who builds houses in the trees for the disabled youth; a woman who forges artful kitchen knives out of old horse-hoof rasps from her father’s blacksmith operation; and a socialist German refugee whose politically charged puppet shows in the fields of the Northeast Kingdom draw thousands. We love this new issue of extraordinary armchair travel by The Collective Quarterly. [ Continue reading ]
The Amsterdam-based artist Matthijs Booij has come up with a creative solution for his old age: One Thousand Drawing Pension Plan. Since 2014, Booij has been selling drawings for long-term monthly payments and hopes to build up his pension in this way. For €1,- per month you can buy a drawing of the former half of notorious artist duo Miktor & Molf. When one decides to buy a work, the payment continues until the artist's pension, with Booij receiving as much money for a drawing as he would now when it's paid at once, in full. The contract can't be broken, but can be resold (unless there's a case of mortality). By the time he can retire in 2050, he hopes to have earned €440.000,- with the project. Next to this fascinating creative form to buy his art, we love Booij's grimey aesthetic, using both collage techniques as free flowing sketches, showing a beautiful diversity in the works he creates. Make sure to keep an eye on this extraordinary project. [ Continue reading ]
We are big fans of Chris Black's New York City-based Done to Death Projects, which has been releasing inspirational printed titles over the course of the last few years. Among the publications one finds the work of another one of our favorites; photographer Mikael Kennedy, next to the recent title which we really like by Chris Black himself: 'I Know You Think You Know It All: Advice and Observations For You to Stand Apart in Public and Online' and now Done to Death Projects presents 'Bountiful', a new book from the very talented young photographer Noah Emrich. During the summer of 2013, Emrich embarked on a 12.000 mile trip around the United States, with the goal to capture post-recession America, searching for the remainders of the once glorious American Dream. The result is a haunting series putting the finger on the sore spot of a proud and powerful country reluctantly having to find a new identity to match its current state of being. [ Continue reading ]