Dutch photo book Design is fine | talk at SYNTHESIS
Dutch photobook Design is fine | talk at Synthesis Gallery . . . 03 October (Monday) 17:00 – 21:00 2022 |
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Henk Groenendijk initiator of Test Press Books[2] gives an informal talk and presents a selection of contemporary Dutch photobooks at the exhibition space of Gallery Synthesis.
Publications of renowned publisher Van Zoetendaal provide insight into a sophisticated design process while the other books create a contrast between classic design and current design experiments.
But most and foremost all fantastic, ephemeral, energetic, inquisitive, voyeuristic or plainly high-level photography. Do not miss it!
TEST PRESS BOOKS| 2 |
A New Pop-Up Book Event. . . 20*-30 October 2022 |
at: KO-OP | Yanko Sakazov bul. 17, Sofia . . . . . . . . . .
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Test Press Books is an exhibition & book-sales of independent publications.
The exhibition presents: an unique poster wall by OPS Type and installation & book presentation by artist Uta Eisenreich on her latest publication ‘AS IF’.
A wide spectrum of other publications will be available in small numbers to create insight in the scope of independent books.
Special focus will be on art theory & practice, education and city-culture & architectural planning through editions by publisher Valiz [NL]
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . For more details see ‘Events page’
RADICAL PLAY |poster show
Exhibition:
12*-19.05.2022 | at: Espace PORT A, Sofia . . . . part of FIG.2 Festival and the European Art Night Sofia
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With RADICAL PLAY |poster show we presented a selection of radical posters from the collection of Henk Groenendijk [NL].
Snatched from the walls of Rietveld Academie Amsterdam and collected over the years they represent a dynamic and playful design attitude of student in the bachelor and master programs.
Pop-Up Books at KO-OP
Test Press | Pop-Up Books 1 . . . 23*-28 Nov. 2021 |
at: KO-OP | Yanko Sakazov bul. 17, Sofia . . . . . . . . . .
Test Press Pop-Up Books is an exhibition & booksale of independent publications. Special attention will be given to publications of Experimental Jetset [NL] and the books of Snejanka Mihaylova [BG].
A wide spectrum of other publications will be available in small numbers to create insight in the scope of independent books. Most of them are highly contemporary and contain an element of manifest- and critical research.
Photobooks at Synthesis
November 18th 2021, Test Press organized an informal talk at the exhibition space of Synthesis.
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Henk Groenendijk talked shortly about the selection of contemporary photo-books that he brought with him. Some unique books were on the table for viewing. All photo-books were ‘independent’ publications initiated by photographers or designers as authors in close cooperation.
Intrigued about the free and experimental nature of the books, a lot of questions focused on the obvious collaborative working method of presented photographers and designers. Answers pointed to education which played a crucial role in the establishment of that collaboration.
Henk also shed some light on books that he brought and donated to the library of Synthesis among which an original copy of the catalogue of the Famous exhibition ‘The Family of Man’
Test Press • PUNKT
Oktober 14th 2021, was a rainy day when we arrived at PUNKT an independent design studio based in Plovdiv. The word was out about the upcoming Test Press Book Event and eager to find out what it was all about, they invited us to give a books preview presentation. Everybody gathered in their cozy studio… Continue reading Test Press • PUNKT
Test Press in Sofia 2020
In November 2020, TEST PRESS came to Sofia. The exhibition Test Press 20 Years of Student publications 1999 – 2019 was made possible by Goethe Institute and as part of Melba Design Festival. Many people including a lot of students braved the covid restrictions to visit the show to enjoy and debated the phenomena of… Continue reading Test Press in Sofia 2020
Test Press -Zine
TEST PRESS is a display of student publications from the archive of designer, collector and teacher Henk Groenendijk. These publications have been produced by students of the Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Amsterdam over a period of 20 years and were collected as a byproduct to many years of teaching and balance on the fine line between… Continue reading Test Press -Zine
i THINK and I think i’ve THOUGHT a thought
Through the vocal cords to form its pitch, into the mouth, where the tongue and teeth give its final texture and push the word outside the body, into the air. With his own spatial language, Josse Pyl examines the intuition that lies behind our perception of the world in order to show the machinery behind… Continue reading i THINK and I think i’ve THOUGHT a thought
POOL 4, embarrassingly obsessive and manic
Turato channels the textual hysteria emitted from our smartphones to accentuate the volatility of language when taken out of context. Her work speaks to an age in which language is disconnected from its informative function and words are abstracted from meaning. All that surrounds her finds its way back into her work. In this manner… Continue reading POOL 4, embarrassingly obsessive and manic
A PLAY (performance)
This book reproduces Gertrude Steins Objects Lie On A Table (1922), a modernist play told through still life. Objects appear on the eponymous table and are transformed, from their humble selves into symbolic representations or characters in a series of cryptic narratives. Surpassing the representational aspects of language, the text is structurally illegible. James Langdon’s… Continue reading A PLAY (performance)
Upfront |1.20 x 5m
For more than twenty years, the billboard in front of the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam is a stage for printed art, design and (school)announcements. Throughout the years it also functioned as a showcase of what is possible at the school’s screenprinting shop, seducing students to come down and try this versatile technique for themselves.… Continue reading Upfront |1.20 x 5m
Corpogate
©2021, In a near future of a distant universe, the system decided to run away. Business people are trying to save corporations for their own interest. A robot is caught up in their mess… This 4 hands comic depicts a (not so serious) sci-fi story inspired by Guy Debord and Britney Spears. Victoria is a… Continue reading Corpogate
Dear Clay
Dear S, I have been thinking about my last visit to your studio lately. The one in which you revealed the collection of black sketchbooks you had been keeping for the past decade. I have always been pretty bad at keeping sketchbooks myself despite my love for drawing. This is maybe why I got attracted… Continue reading Dear Clay
Paris Mortel |retouched
This book presents next to a complete facsimile of the original Paris Mortel ©1963 a full documentation of the creation process that resulted in Johan van der Keuken’s classic publication. In addition to an extensive introduction and background information provided by the composer Willem van Zoetendaal, the book also contains a selection of photographs from… Continue reading Paris Mortel |retouched
The Minox Files
At 8 x 11 mm, the Minox has the smallest-sized negatives in analog photography, Mark van den Brink cuts the polyester film to size himself before loading it into his Minox camera. He bought the camera with the idea that it allows you to photograph the things around you inconspicuously, like a voyeur. During his… Continue reading The Minox Files
AS IF
The book of photographs ‘AS IF‘ is the sequel to ‘A NOT B’, wherein quotidian items are again staged and captured through the camera’s unblinking eye. Yet the images are no longer set in the innocent atmosphere of the preschool years, when the world is read through analogies, but catapulted into a darker space of… Continue reading AS IF
Bill, a textless magazine
BILL 3 is a yearly magazine of photographic stories, edited and designed by graphic designer Julie Peeters. In this experimental photography magazine Julie plays with the notion of the image as a material object prioritizing visual reading without distraction. The magazine is also a visual reader, presenting new or previously unpublished work but most obvious… Continue reading Bill, a textless magazine
The Athens Recorder
What do people do, if they are out in the street? Reading? Waiting? Can we recognize the inhabitant, the stranger, the traveler by his actions and deeds in an urban setting? This is the premise of Johannes Schwartz’s exploration, which was set in Athens in the fall of 2015. Places of culture and consumption, streets,… Continue reading The Athens Recorder
thisiswarehouse.com
Warehouse is an Amsterdam [NL] based fashion platform that aims to create an open, inclusive and engaging environment that facilitates critical dialogue and the creation of a discourse that goes beyond treating fashion as a commodity. It was founded by Elisa van Joolen, Femke de Vries and Hank van der VoetIn the last 2 years… Continue reading thisiswarehouse.com
One-to-One Reader
One-to-One refers to a working method in which items of clothing became large-sized printing tools, covered in black and blue ink. Each clothing item served as a stamp, and was simultaneously being stamped on, thus creating a chain reaction and making each clothing item an original and a copy. As such the project One-to-One offers… Continue reading One-to-One Reader
THE FOLD an exploration of the creative process
With elementary materials – wood, paper, clay, tape, paint – artist Fleur van Dodewaard creates ephemeral compositions that play with the possibilities of photography, sculpture, and painting. Situated at those intersections, her work uses photography to achieve the final result. ‘THE FOLD’ presents ten years of practice, reshaped according to the principles of book production: folding, cutting, binding.
Durable Discussions at Sandberg Institute [NL]
This compact pocketsize hott of the press little book comprises seventeen essays written by designers and artists from the [Temporary Program 2020-2022] Disarming Design Department of Sandberg Instituut [NL] to celebrate their two year program. Engaged in social, material, and political struggles, the individuals retell their personal histories, writing across objects, events, places, and habits.… Continue reading Durable Discussions at Sandberg Institute [NL]
Typefaces– have other interests besides –Words
Jungmyung Lee is a graphic/type designer, running a type foundry, called Jung-Lee Type Foundry based in Amsterdam. Through J-LTF, Jungmyung’s primary focus is telling stories and exploring the life of typefaces and their emotions as she manifests typefaces have their own courses of life. She publishes the experimental typography, art, and literary journal, Real-Time Realist. Through… Continue reading Typefaces– have other interests besides –Words
Rapid Eye Movement
Light Sleep, the creation of a typeface This typeface is inspired by some dreams and the different steps of the sleep are represented: 1. Light Sleep 2. Rapid Eye Movement 3. Deep Sleep.The reading of the typeface is following these different steps, in the last step, Deep Sleep, the letter are not readable at all.… Continue reading Rapid Eye Movement
Superstructure
The relationship between language and the city is the main themes of Superstructure – a retrospective on the small Amsterdam based graphic design studio Experimental Jetset
By focusing on four (sub-)cultural movements that have greatly informed the practice of Experimental Jetset (Constructivism, the Situationist International, the Provo movement, and the Post-Punk continuum), various ways in which the languages of these movements manifested themselves in the city are explored, just as the city manifested itself in the languages of these movements.
It results an abstract representation of a fragmented metropolis, in which these different movements exist at the same time, not unlike overlapping districts or zones.
notes on Experimental Jetset
Four years after ‘Statement and Counter-Statement’ (2015), Experimental Jetset returned in 2019 with their second paperback Full Scale False Scale Notes on Experimental Jetset /Vol.3 for Roma Publications. Whereas the previous publication had a more overall monographic scope, ‘Full Scale False Scale’ focuses on a single project: the large, site-specific installation that the studio created… Continue reading notes on Experimental Jetset
Full Scale False Scale
‘Full Scale False Scale’ focuses on a single project: the large, site-specific installation that the studio recently created for the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
Part reader, part collage, the book forms a subjective archive of research material, just as constructed as the installation itself. and reads like an exciting novel.
The many (insight) details testify to Jetset’s research, which clearly manifests how cultural baggage, political commitment and curiosity about contextual backgrounds play an important role in their work.
Test Press -Zine
TEST PRESS is a display of student publications from the archive of designer, collector and teacher Henk Groenendijk. These publications have been produced by students of the Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Amsterdam over a period of 20 years and were collected as a byproduct to many years of teaching and balance on the fine line between… Continue reading Test Press -Zine