Inner, Outer, Paintings, Friends. Lukas Panek, Palais Books

Posted in painting, photography on July 24th, 2023
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Lukas Panek’s Inner, Outer, Paintings, Friends is an archive, a collection of everyday photographs, moments of intimacy, anonymous images from the internet, and the artist’s own work sessions. Through this exploration, which constitutes his playground, he documents the variety of representations in today’s online culture. Registers intermingle and create ambiguous narratives.In the process, familiar forms of narrative are deliberately undermined and the reader is immersed and drawn into the flow of images.
Inner, Outer, Paintings, Friends thus gathers more than 500 images and presents in its second part the paintings of Lukas Panek. Selected from this flow, they are both extracts of a global experience common to all, and a reflection of a personal world. This book plunges us into the abundant, vibrant and playful work of this young Berlin artist, a graduate of the Dusseldörf school, and offers us an extremely current vision of contemporary photography.

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550km Past_Present_Future. Marcin Matuszak. MONO DUO TRI / RttCL

Posted in photography, travel on July 6th, 2023
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In mere 100 years from now, the Baltic coastline as we know it will be nothing more than a beautiful memory lost somewhere in history – according to the leading experts studying climate change. The melting glaciers will swallow up Swinoujscie, whilst turning Gdańsk into the modern day Atlantis and Poznan (the author’s hometown in the Western Poland) into a slowly submerging seaside resort town. 

In view of these predictions and out of sheer curiosity, Marcin Matuszak, Poznan-based designer and artist (accompanied by his friend, Tomasz Peukert – music producer who was collecting the field recordings), decided to walk along the entire current Polish seaside, to document the current state of it and to prepare a photo album from the material collected during the journey: “500km”. 

The project of the year-long walk, divided into 12 stages of several days was called “550 km” – as the estimated coastline of the Polish Baltic Sea. After walking the entire length, it turned out to be nearly 607 km from the German to the Russian border.

The project documents the Baltic Sea through four seasons, in the full sun and when it rains, with the wind and against the wind, with stormy horizons and calming sunsets. Against this backdrop, the sand, the shells, the seals, and also the cliffs breaking off with tree roots tell the story of the shifting coastline. 

The material presented, however, is not purely documentary. It is a photo record of a moment. A maximum of a three-second pause. A snapshot that cuts the future from the past.

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Park 2 INN Exhibition opening / Louise Verstraete, Rebecca Quix @ Motto Berlin. July 30, 2023.

Posted in Exhibitions, Motto Berlin event, Motto Berlin store, Motto Books, photography on June 30th, 2023
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Dear Friends,

We are excited to invite you to the opening of Park 2 INN on Saturday, July 1st from 7PMa duo exhibition by Louise Verstraete and Rebecca Quix in the presence of Nissan Sunny 1.4LX and a sound installation by Lukas Katzer.

It has been a while since we have seen each other. How are you doing? I’m sorry to call you so early. Holiday schedules. MidDay sMiles. Days go by so fast. I was eating these curly fries and was thinking of you today. Lunch hour at the fuel station.  The connection got lost. My tires were losing pressure. Are you here already? Here is still there. Soon there. 

The exhibition will be on view from July 1, Monday to Saturday 12 to 8 PM until July 31, 2023. This exhibition has been made possible with the support of Flanders State of the Art.

Louise Verstraete is a multidisciplinary artist working with the medium of textile and the performative power that the medium carries within. Her projects show an interplay between photography, textiles, scenography and performative interventions. Louise holds an MFA in Textile Design from LUCA School of Arts, Belgium and currently lives and works in Berlin, Germany.   

Rebecca Quix (BE) currently lives and works in Brussels. She holds an MFA from LUCA School of Arts, Brussels (2022) and studied at the School of Visual Arts, New York (2021). She is the founder of the project space, Nissan Sunny 1.4LX. 

Picky Eating. Dongnyeok Choi.

Posted in food, photography, Self published on June 21st, 2023
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Pyeonsik (Picky Eating) refers to the act of not eating a specific food or eating only a specific food for various reasons or problem of taste.

It’s up to you to decide what food you eat. Strangely, the idea that you should eat well is prevalent in Korea. Perhaps it can be said that it is related to Korean food culture. In Korea, there is a culture of rice mixed with various kinds of side dishes and eaten little by little. In this culture, picky eating will be a habit that is difficult to see in a good perspective. If you don’t eat many kinds of side dishes evenly, there will be leftovers, which is an act that adults don’t like. Also, mechanical egalitarianism, which says, “What I eat should be eaten by others,” plays a part. Because Korean think homogeneity is too important, they often cannot accept the fact that others can’t eat what I eat. And also say “Why don’t you eat this?” and “Why don’t you eat this delicious thing?”

So, it is not easy to proudly say that you are a picky eater in Korea because of this view. However, there is nothing more painful than forcing yourself to eat something you don’t want to eat. I don’t have enough time to eat only what I like, but I wonder if I have to eat food that I hate while enduring this pain.

After you read it up to here, you’re like, “Oh, this person has a picky taste.” “Isn’t it just an excuse?”‘ I saw it exactly if I thought so. I’m a picky eater. Also, writing such a long article about picky eating is because I think the world is too harsh for a person who is suddenly picky.

Anyway, this book is a collection of ingredients that I don’t eat. If you look at the ingredients in it, you may wonder this man even don’t eat this? But first, I have to make it clear that I don’t eat this unconditionally. 
If the ingredients lose their original taste and play a good role in certain foods, I tend to eat. It may be a little embarrassing not to eat something, but through this book, I want to proudly reveal that I am a picky eater.

In conclusion, what I’m trying to say through this book is that I just want the world to be a little generous with people who are picky. Wouldn’t it be better to just understand rather than point your finger at picky eaters? It is possible that others may hate what I like or others may like what I hate. Just as each person has a different face, their eating habits are different. I have a very pleasant diet even though I have a lot of food that I don’t eat, so I want you to admit that it’s different sometimes. It’s just my little wish. Anyway, if you have read up to here, I hope you will accept this book with a generous heart. We are now starting to talk about the ingredients we saw from the perspective of a picky eater.

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A ROOM WITH A VIEW. Verena Von Beckerath (Ed.). Monroe Books.

Posted in photography, writing on June 14th, 2023
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A ROOM WITH A VIEW takes place in and around the Pensione Seguso, a historic, family-run hotel in Venice. Guided by architecture professor Verena von Beckerath as part of the homonymous seminar at Bauhaus-Universität Weimar that she led in collaboration with art historian Sassa Trülzsch, the contributions to this edition range from the historical to the anecdotal to the artistic and beyond, resulting in a holistic and comprehensive analysis of not only the pensione, but what hospitality and tourism mean today, both in Venice and the world at large.
The contributors to this publication come from varying backgrounds, and the rich variety in tone and format reflects that. A ROOM WITH A VIEW features a reflection and collage by urologist and art fanatic Albrecht Kastein, photos by architect and photographer Andrew Alberts, architect Oda Pälmke’s personal account of her time at the pensione, an insightful interview with the owners Yvonne Matijas Seguso and Lawrence Hoque, and architect, professor and editor Ludovico Centis’s historical account of Venice.
Much like the pensione, the book eludes rigid categorisation; it alternates between written pieces and photographs, each adding nuance to the work and changing the narrative perspective. As you wander through the pensione during the course of this edition, meeting the owners and venturing into the history of Venice, one question continuously arises, how can we live together?
This book is NOA 10 in the Notes on Architecture series, which is published by the Chair of Design and Housing at Bauhaus-Universität Weimar.

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Rasto. Mircea Sorin Albuțiu.

Posted in photography, Self published, travel on June 8th, 2023
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You see what I see? On the bed, we see the soft touch of the light filtered by the curtains that open to the morning’s gestures.
Each day images appear, certain of new discoveries in a foreign land. In the silence of the journey towards creating a picture, feet scratch the sand and the body inscribes a shape in our gaze. Now, places are inhabited by languid, curious gestures and unspoken words. In Mircea’s images, bodies speak, movements express a time saturated with waiting. The echo emerges from the artist’s expression, through the unconscious perspective of lenses, mediators of a broader vision.

Tu vês o que eu vejo? Sobre a cama, vemos o toque suave da luz coada pelas cortinas que se abrem aos gestos da manhã. A cada dia surge o registo, na certeza de uma nova descoberta no país dos outros. No silêncio do percurso para o desenho, os pés riscam a areia e o corpo inscreve uma forma no olhar. Agora, os lugares são habitados por gestos languidos, curiosos e pelas palavras não ditas. Nas imagens de Mircea, os corpos falam, os movimentos expressam um tempo saturado da espera. O eco surge na expressão do artista, através do inconsciente ótico das lentes mediadoras de uma visão maior.

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Westmorland County Show. Conor Rollins. 89books.

Posted in photography on May 26th, 2023
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The Westmorland County Agricultural Society ‘WCAS’ was established in 1799, and for over 200 years has survived world wars, recessions and the Great British weather to establish itself as one of Britain’s oldest livestock agricultural events. Located on the fringes of the Lake District, Westmorland County Show has showcased rural life to the masses. The project aims to highlight the contrasts found at an event where farming communities, tourists, competitors, VIPs and shoppers explore the land in their unique ways. Through grainy black and white 35mm film, the intention was to blur the suggested timeframe by playing with the unusual sights, outfits and activities found when livestock and different communities interact in a field.

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in media res (0825 – 1236). Manuel Sekou

Posted in photography, research on May 23rd, 2023
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in medias res is an ongoing selective collection of seemingly random online images as well as self-taken screenshots and photography. Featuring a selection of over 1200 pictures out of the personal archive, it deals with patterns of recognition, appropriation and contextualization of (popular) cultures. By reproduction through means of hard copy a shift of attention shall be provoked (in favor of THE IMAGE).

Following musical techniques of plunderphonics, the mode of situating and framing finds manifestation from 15th century renaissance art (emblem) through to present operating principles of the social media online platform instagram (hashtags). 
Focusing on reciprocal influence and interference between text and image, the project aims to intentionally subvert cultural codes of visual content and wording by allegory and metaphor. 
Associated figures of thought, socio-political terms, new slang, ambiguous terms of marketing and connotated phrases are addressed to expand (semiotic) nuances and undertones of modern day society (consumer culture, mainstream-noise, fashion-dynamics, politics / environmental issues), thus to challenge ways of perception of cultural sets of phenomena (meme).. 
Of course, a certain sense of humor is a substantial attitude of indifference to ride the jittering stream that shapes contours of global scenes of references and re-production of “meaning” through poor images.

in medias res is a context bundle. 
in medias res is a deep learning process. 
in medias res is highly subjective.

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A Kassen – Dimensions Variable. Rene Campolmi, Adam Carr, Jonatan Habib Engqvist. Mousse Publishing.

Posted in photography, sculpture on May 15th, 2023
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A Kassen is a Danish art collective whose work encompasses photography, installation, and sculpture. Recalling the process-over-product mantra of 1960s action painters and Pop artists, their practice hinges on central questions of authorship and explores the relationship between form and content. Beginning with an everyday object—a material such as bronze, or something more ephemeral, like a puddle or a reflection—A Kassen task themselves with acts of construction and deconstruction, reinterpretation and recontextualization, all the while challenging preconceived notions of what the phenomenon in question is. Through these manipulations, they create works meant to be seen explicitly through the context of art and aesthetics, where the spectator’s role becomes central—indeed, an integral part of the work. Bystanders become interpreters, creating layers of meaning and understanding while rewriting the narratives at hand.

Dimensions Variable includes essays by Irene Campolmi, Adam Carr, and Jonatan Habib Engqvist, and an illustrated chronology of A Kassen’s works.

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Hide. Philip Pecker. Mosses

Posted in photography on April 13th, 2023
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A journey of escape
The closer he gets to the border
The more he feels
What is truly disappearing
Press the shutter
Compress your thoughts
Through the aperture
Hidden in photographs
Becoming the shadow of light
On the barren snowfield
Perhaps you’ll begin to miss home 

“We are all dust.” – Philip Pecker

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