21/01/2011

The Selby’s Gallery Debut

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The Selby’s Gallery Debut

Todd Selby – as in The Selby – is at long last making his gallery debut. Featured alongside the prolific and renowned French-American portrait photographer Elliott Erwitt, the ensemble show is sure to be a landmark look at the evolving practice of portraiture. By capturing subjects – carefully considered and extraordinarily creative subjects – within the natural habitats of their eccentric and particular home or work spaces, Selby manages, fluently and effortlessly, to construct images that leave a 360° impression.

Like a Yosuf Karsh for our age, his ability to play on and pull out his subjects’ sensibilities has lent he and his camera the exceptional ability to create penetrating and sagacious looks into their identities. He’s graced the pages of numerous publications, and continues to create photos that are insightful, brazen and just plain enjoyable to look at.

Opening tonight at Atlanta’s well-curated and ahead-of-the-curve Jackson Fine Art gallery, which has featured the likes of Massimo Vitali, Arthur Leipzig, Sally Mann, and Steve Schapiro, at 6pm, and will run until March 25.


Rockaway Taco, A Selby Film from the selby on Vimeo.

Tag Christof – Images & film courtesy The Selby, special thanks to Malia Schramm at Jackson Fine Art

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21/01/2011

Intersection Italia

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Intersection Italia

Intersection, quite possibly the world’s only car magazine with style, has just rolled out its Italian version. Worlds away from the hyper photoshopped chrome and burnt rubber glossy pages of other car mags, this is a nuts and bolts, design savvy look at the incredibly powerful culture surrounding the automobile and other equally lusty modes of transport. And perhaps most importantly, you can read one in public without looking like a meathead or hormonal teenage boy.

The inaugural issue features Phillippe Starck (and a novel car design by him), Jean Nouvel and Jun Takahashi among others, as well as a look at West Coast USA’s roadside tourist stops (commonly called autogrills in Italian), Chinese take-away bike/camper hybrids, a keen look at an open source automobile among a host of other gearhead fancies. 2DM double teamed an editorial, as well, with a gritty piece by photog Bruna Kazinoti and stylist Ilaria Norsa. With its a-ok art direction replete with a slathering of slab-serifs by Francesco Petroni, excellent editorial curation and the style and reverence that the oft-maligned automobile deserves, we’re pretty revved up about Intersection Italia. Benvenuto!



Tag Christof

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20/01/2011

Corduroy Magazine

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Corduroy Magazine

In a chance meeting this week with New York photographer Peter Ash Lee, we were introduced to the superb magazine, Corduroy, which had until now somehow managed to slip under our radar. Currently in its seventh issue (with the eighth slated to peek over the horizon very soon), it looks to be one of few truly compelling voices in the cacophony of new generation publications. Neither resplendent nor loud, Corduroy’s serif-laden and measured sobriety is a welcome breath of fresh air, its restrained and sophisticated art direction, engaging and well-written texts and excellent collection of features making it a delightful read.

Lee just happens to be the journal’s creative director, and is responsible for the host of intimate portraits from end-to-end of each issue, including number seven’s cover and feature figure, Isabella Rossellini. Other luminaries featured in the issue (and deftly photographed by Lee) include former original boy bandmate Joey McIntyre, rising star Dave Franco, Sophie Ward, designer Jean Touitou and the stunning Helena Christensen. Additionally, you’ll find works from our own very prolific Skye Parrott (she’s everywhere!), as well as a series of illustrations from the larger than life Robert Longo, photos from Israeli artist Michael Chelbin, and a gripping series of paintings from the archives of the recently passed and eminently sentient Pennsylvania artist Andrew Wyeth.

Stay cozy, Corduroy. We’re big fans. And get more copies to Milan!

Tag Christof

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19/01/2011

Hixsept

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Hixsept

Hard to imagine that Hixsept is a dozen years old this year. The French brand founded by two accomplished graffiti mongers pioneered the introduction of graffiti elements into fashion, and has grown to become an “environment” in which mediums mix freely. They even fancy themselves “graphical activists through urban art” – something which is born out in their jarring and bold patterns, not to mention their mascot Oiseau Gris, which all of us crazy urbanites know terribly well.

And like their rampant spiritual mascot, “the rude witness of the greyness and daily rhythm of our cities,” they have managed to assert themselves extraordinarily well. They’ve made big waves in the worlds of fashion and art, having even become capable art directors and overlords of their very own magazine. Which is all perfectly logical considering their background in capably and quickly art directing large slabs of concrete into radical works of art, probably under excruciatingly strict and only slightly sub-legal deadlines. (Wink.)

Their current collection, Lost Equilibrium, is a cheeky and subversive work in pattern and images. Very cool stuff. We’re looking forward to see where they go next – keep it up guys!


Tag Christof – Images courtesy Hixsept

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19/01/2011

Lorenzo Nencioni / Yuko Nagayama

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Lorenzo Nencioni / Yuko Nagayama

This more than century-old coffee house in Tokyo was just masterfully restructured by award-winning young architect Yugo Nagayama. Her vision provided for a pleasantly warm and minimal space, and remains unequivocally and charmingly Japanese in its contemporary guise. While remaining remarkably true to its original elevation, the structure now houses an updated coffee house called Kabuya on its ground level and features a small contemporary arts library on its first floor.



These images are fresh from the adventurous camera of 2DM’s accomplished architecture and design photographer Lorenzo Nencioni.

Tag Christof – Images courtesy 2DM / Lorenzo Nencioni

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19/01/2011

Marco Klefisch for Z Zegna

Marco Klefisch for Z Zegna

We’re fresh from Z Zegna 2011‘s A/W runway show yesterday, imaginatively billed Artisan Alchemy, and are pretty happy with what we saw. The rather innovative, structural silhouettes and strong textures, all rendered in sober greys, greens and taupes, went over well. And since every single look had its very own model, we got to enjoy everything in the collection twice. Come to think of it, we’d really, really love one of their chunky new “Futuristic” jackets in all their hooded spaceman glory for our trudge through this thick January fog…

The line’s new fragrance this season, a dapper, effervescent scent in a gem of a rubber and glass bottle, has been freshly illustrated for Z Zegna by 2DM‘s boy genius Marco Klefisch. It really is too bad scratch-and-sniff monitors were never invented.

By Tag Christof – Illustration by 2DM / Marco Klefisch for Z Zegna 

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18/01/2011

Elena Xausa for GAS / Bread & Butter 2011

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Elena Xausa for GAS / Bread & Butter 2011

Bread & Butter 2011 opens tomorrow! And for this liveliest of trade fairs, Gas is pulling out all the stops and staging a 3D runway show of their A/W collection. Invitees will be treated to their own pair of tri-dimensional specs, which will also give them the key to experience a large scale piece by 2DM’s multitalented Elena Xausa, which will be the multi-eyed centrepiece of their flagship Munzstraße store’s vitrine. Don your x-ray specs here to see it pop to life – and see it big in Berlin!

Catch the cocktail party at Munzstraße 21 in Berlin from 7pm to 10 this Thursday 20 January.

Tag Christof – Image Elena Xausa, courtesy of 2DM/Management

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18/01/2011

Xevi Muntané for VMAN

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Xevi Muntané for VMAN

Hot damn. 2DM‘s Xevi Muntanè just shot this firecracker in Barcelona for VMAN. Styled by Alberto Murtra, and apparently no small feat to have pulled off, the the group could be easily mistaken for an exceptionally attractive sports team. Smack dab in the centre is the unmissable Jon Kortajarena (who happened to be fashionably late for the shooting after missing his plane), with other notables including Pablo Otero, Joan Pedrola, Michael Gstoettner, Altor Matero, and Adrian Cardoso. They and the rest of this muscly smorgasbord are represented entirely by SIGHT.

Cool down!

From the Bureau – Image Xevi Muntané at 2DM, Making Of by Florentino Vázquez

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17/01/2011

Diego Soprana + Sergio Rossi for Please

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Diego Soprana + Sergio Rossi

Handsculpted, rather extreme shoes rendered in brass and other highly textural materials are front and centre on Sergio Rossi’s menu this season. The brand’s creative director Francesco Russi called the fresh and imaginative collection a “return to extreme linearity, and a balancing act between experimentation and tradition.” The line is also a skilful balancing act of colour, with the cheeky use of neons alongside normally prosaic earth tones, and the effect is uncanny and counterintuitively quite handsome. 2DM/’s square-deal surreal illustrator Diego Soprana brought the collection to life for Please in an entirely new dimension.


These shoes were positively made to be illustrated by Diego… and we couldn’t be more pleased! (Ha!)

Tag Christof, illustrations courtesy of Diego Soprana, represented by 2DM/Management

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17/01/2011

Polidori’s Versailles at Galeria Carla Sozzani

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Polidori’s Versailles at Galleria Carla Sozzani

We met renowned artist Robert Polidori at the vernissage of his new exhibition at Galleria Carla Sozzani this weekend. The French Canadian cum-New York photographer is well known for his imposing architectural reportage work, most recently for his deeply moving series of photographs of the devastation wrought on residential New Orleans immediately following Hurricane Katrina. His past projects also include one of the only looks into the interiors of the abandoned habitations surrounding Chernobyl. In this exhibition, zeroing in specifically on the restoration of Versailles, are a series of photos, taken both in the mid 1980s and subsequently in the latter half of the last decade.



To those who have visited Versailles as tourist in all its punctiliously manicured perfection, Polidori’s images are strangely disorienting. As is common in his work, the sense of still and eternality is fully intact, but the disorder and imperfection in such an iconically untouchable place is an insight into its fragility. From an out of place painting, to a swatch of crumbling paint or conspicuously modern fire equipment hiding behind an open gold-lacquered door, the viewer gets the a sense that the palace is anything but eternal, and rather, is transitory and open to interpretation over time.

This intentionally forgotten layer of history – the focused modification (handily branded as restoration, because it was hardly straight preservation) of a palace originally intended to display unlimited grandeur and a point of pilgrimage today as a temple of an extreme monarch’s colossal (mis)use of wealth – is perhaps a key lesson in understanding the construction of history itself. Polidori summed up brilliantly, saying, “With Versailles, I had the opportunity to witness museum restoration but I realised what was really going on was historical revisionism. What does it mean to restore something? It means to make something old new again… When you choose to restore a certain room as it was in a certain period, the period you chose is based on your contemporary worldview.”

The series is full of gorgeous, rich images that require plenty of time to ponder, and amount to perhaps one of the most honest looks into Versailles you’ll ever come across. Opened at Galleria Carla Sozzani Saturday 15 January, and will run until March 27. 10 Corso Como in Milan.

Tag Christof

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