Kirjahaku

The debut publication from London based artist Daniel David Freeman features collection of musings on the experience of being an artist, collated as a series of posters housed in a screen printed bag. - 32 A2 posters, folded into a 64pp A3 book - Bound with an orange elastic loop - Housed in a screen printed glassine bag - Fluro text page with foreword by Francesca Gavin - An Existential Crisis carpenters pencil - A Mono Lisa postcard - A selection of 5 stickers - 250 Copies, signed and numbered

Key to the work of Lucas Maassen is a process of validation through perception. To what extent are aspects of scale and matter fundamental to determine and pronounce typological objects? In a highly playful manner, Maassen manipulates the parameters of conceiving objects; deriving from recognisable functionality into a fictional realm of attributed economic value as limited or as matter, both effectively qualitative realities, he qualitatively measures these up to apparent conditions of the imaginary. _x000D__x000D_Utilising exclusive materials and technologies, a secondary layer of tension of conceiving objects arises. A toy chair made of pure gold, poured out of one bar of gold, raises the question of its value: emotional vs. real value. Likewise, a chair created by a Focus Electron Beam (FEB), results in a chair so small that even a regular microscope cannot reveal this seat. This chair is a leap of faith into technological authorship. Our day-to-day empirical reality is just not good enough to capture these objects. To what extent is technological culture able to transmit empirical experiences to our mindset? And moreover, our cultural tradition tells us that a chair has four legs but what happens when these notions are being challenged by a non-empirical, technological order?_x000D__x000D_Measuring up chairs to the extent that they seem to generate a life of their own; through a character derived from inner qualities beyond any man-conceived sphere, Maassen creates an imaginative order. _x000D__x000D_The publication of Lucas Maassen features texts by Sonquis Moreno, writer/editor on design in various forms, and Freek Lomme, curator/writer and director of Onomatopee. Moreno lively portrays Maassen’s ’design act’ in its sphere of being, while Lomme playfully levels up the scope of his work to some ontological and empirical parameters. Furthermore, some processes and hypotheses hit the light within this publication!

In 2021, invited by the French artist Thomas Mailaender for a residency at Tuba Club in the Calanques National Park in southern Marseille, Julien Berthier took an old boat and topped it with a calanque-inspired slab of rock sculpted in the same resin as the boat’s hull. Once placed in the water, the work became practically invisible and gave the installation its title. Continuing his reflections on landscape, Berthier’s book “The Invisible Journey” incorporates the rock-boat across a set of postcards, in the same manner: both visible and invisible. Low tech by choice, Berthier cut out images of the boat manually, then glue them directly to the postcards. The rock-boat thus embarks on a tour of various places and eras, accompanying the travel accounts of strangers.

Ettore Sottsass (1917–2007) was an architect and designer, labeled the godfather of Italian design. Born in Austria and based in Milan, Sottsass studied architecture at the Politecnico di Torino in Turin. After spending most of World War II in a concentration camp in Yugoslavia, Sottsass returned to Italy, where he set up his studio. ?? In 1958, he was hired as a design consultant for the Olivetti company, a position he held for more than 20 years. While there, he produced many designs, including the Elea 9003 computer and the red plastic Valentine portable typewriter. His aim was to produce objects that went beyond typical consumerist products. ?? As Sottsass distanced himself from pure functionalism, he started experimenting with designs that had social and historical components. During this time, Sottsass became a leading figure in the Radical-Design movement. In 1981, Sottsass led a group of designers who came to be known as the Memphis group. This group experimented with colors and materials, creating multifunctional pieces and breaking with convention. Their new materials included neon, unusual finishes, and patterned plastic laminates. After Memphis, Sottsass continued to produce provocative work, constantly challenging the accepted practices of the day. He also established the architectural firm Sottsass Associati, with the aim of producing large-scale designs. ?? Sottsass’s work has been the subject of retrospective exhibitions at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Design Museum in London, among others. His numerous awards included the title of Office of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres of the French Republic in 1992, an honorary degree from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1993 an Honorary Doctor of the Royal College of Art in London in 1996, an Oribe Award in Japan in 1997, and a Sir Misha Black Award in 1999.