Who said social distancing has to be a barrier to creative discourse? Dutch artist Erik Kessels and French artist Thomas Sauvin last year proved that creativity could survive coronavirus.
Every day throughout the tumultuous spring of 2020 Erik and Thomas sent one another idiosyncratic, uncaptioned photographs, catalysing an organic, free-associative exchange of some 120 archival images. The result is Talk Soon, a tearaway postcard book which allows readers to endlessly juxtapose the delightful photographs selected by the two quarantined artists. Their archives of vernacular photography, one from the East, the other from the West, achieve a dialogue through the recurrence of photographic practices, aesthetics, and subjects.
For the release, Atelier Éditions’ author Kingston Trinder composed an equally free-associative, altogether-whimsical narrative with which to further entwine the duo’s eclectic photographs. Expect to read and make sense of Surrealist prose such as ‘Tender flesh makes fine duck soup.’ Now there’s a Christmas dinner I haven’t tried.
We’ve previously featured Thomas Sauvin’s work on Creative Boom, being intrigued by his archival project Beijing World Park, an ode to a Chinese theme park which opened in the early ’90s.
Meanwhile, Erik Kessels had a busy and collaborative 2020, having recorded with Anthony Burrill and Malcolm Goldie a record that mixes birdsong and aeroplane noise. Clearly, these pair know a good concept when they see one.
Talk Soon is out now on Atelier Éditions.
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