Studio Jurgen Maelfeyt en Art Paper Editions – förlag

To be explicit or not to be explicit? That’s what Jurgen Maelfeyt questions in his new book, TOY. Inspired by his personal collection of vintage erotica, the Belgium-based photographer’s latest page-turner features a series of reproduced photographs taken from ’70s and ’80s porn magazines. TOY arrives as the third instalment of Maelfeyt’s book trilogy. While still exploring themes of intimacy, desire and the human form, TOY deviates from the on-the-nose titles of his first and second books, WET and FURS, which quite literally explore water and, well, fur, as found in ’70s porn. “There’s actually no toys in this book, they’re just alluded to throughout,” Maelfeyt says. “In fact, I wanted to hide a lot more in TOY.” From images of bodies strewn across sun loungers to close-ups of hands clasping glasses of red wine and stiletto-clad feet tucked under legs on sofas, TOY examines how images in erotic magazines aren’t always about explicit, hardcore sex. They also showcase intimacy in all of its glorious, sexy manifestations. (THE FACE MAGAZINE)

For more than three decades Richard Kern has sought to unravel and illuminate the complex and often darker sides of human nature. Kern makes the psychological space between the sitter, photographer and audience his subject. With his dry, matter of fact approach, he underlines the absurdity of truth and objectivity in photography while playing with our reliance upon taxonomies around sexual representation. This publications contains more than 200 polaroids taken during his several projects over the past 35 years. Design and editing: Jurgen Maelfeyt

In 2023, Lara Verheijden became the first artist invited for a residency at Hotel Amour by Thomas Lélu. Born in 1990 in Amsterdam, the photographer champions boldness and a lack of inhibition in her work. Her iconic nude photographs have paved the way for an intimate and shadowy aesthetic in photography. She is also known for her series of nude calendars that transform the ordinary into personal works of art.

“Fashion” is a concept that represents what is trending at the moment. Paul Kooiker’s fashion photography, on the other hand, is characterised by its timelessness. The artist portrays the biggest fashion brands and today’s most famous faces, but transports them to a world of their own. Disconnected from time and place, his surreal images feel like film stills with stories we can only guess. His photography transcends classic gender roles: his models adopt unusual poses and their faces are often left out of frame, obscuring their identity. At times, it is not even clear whether the subject is human or a doll. In order to capture the extravagance of luxury objects, Kooiker magnifies its means of pre­sen­tation, like for example mannequins and displays, to such a degree that it is ultimately our desire itself that is captured by his camera. Over the span of 10 chapters, he endeavors to articulate his perspective on fashion. This commissioned work, bearing the same title, was showcased prominently in a solo exhibition at the Museum Folkwang Essen in 2021 and at Foam Amsterdam in 2022.

On paper, a book may seem a peculiar object to accommodate Nico Krijno’s work. By virtue of its form, a book is finite, a neat vessel that lends itself to those narratives with a beginning and end. Krijno’s work, however, is not finite; it has no resolution or discernible moments that can be easily pointed at, bound and labelled. And neither does it ebb or flow in tidy rhythms but accumulates, constantly and relentlessly. If anything, Krijno’s work feels — as it always has — more akin to some outpouring of seemingly blithe, childlike play: disorientating and fantastical, and at times almost absurd, but wondrous nevertheless. It is this outpouring though that puts Krijno’s work at odds with the book. Yet for all of this, the book, of which Collages 2020-22 is the latest and most generous, feels a necessary endeavour. When seen in this way, en masse yet contained, it is arguably when we can best understand Krijno. Here we can understand the gravity of performance and process; understand how his work is always more than the sum of its parts; understand how he drifts in one direction to unravel new forms and ideas before returning to a more familiar albeit now different path. And we can understand that for all the similarities his work has with unbridled play, there is something more pointed, more intentional; a kind of persistence and eagerness to exhaust all possibilities that does not exist in the wholly innocent play of a child. Seen in an exhibition or online, one fragmented and the other truly endless, these characteristics and intentions feel more hidden, less tangible. It could be said then that Collages 2020-22 is necessary on two fronts. First, as a way to better understand Krijno, and second, as a way to hold onto something that otherwise is inevitably fleeting.

How satisfying it must be to arrive upon an idea that is large and rich enough to sustain years of experimentation. Painter Gijs Frieling and typographer Job Wouters have been lucky enough to find one. Known collectively as FreelingWaters, they have applied their imagery to a variety of surfaces, from walls and buildings to billboards, books, clothing, and even coffins. For their new project they have turned to antique cabinets, which they see as all- accommodating vessels just begging to be invested by the imagination. But instead of cabinets filled with curiosities, FreelingWaters’s cabinets are themselves the curiosity.
FreelingWaters cabinets is an ongoing project of hand painted antique pine furniture. Collection 1 with The Wrong Shop in London.

‘Object-Oriented Identity: Cultural belongings from our recent past’ is a journey through objects and identities. Through curiosity, it helps discover the unforeseeable directions in our product-oriented society, where one is no longer the sum of their actions, but the sum of their own objects.OOI is a catalog constructed as a result of a personal fascination with understanding the nature of our consumption. It investigates the odd connections between objects and history and their cultural relevance in our individual and collective identities.