Maurice Scheltens
I’ve been following Maurice Scheltens’ work for about the last 10 years. I remember a presentation he gave together with graphic design studio 75B while I was still studying at the Design Academy (long time ago;) and lately he made some super nice new stuff. He’s a dutch photographer working in the fields of fashion, art and advertisement and works for clients and magazines like Nike, Uniqlo, Vitra, Intersection, Fantastic Man, Wallpaper, for whom he produced amazing photographs, I would say art. Maybe you’ve seen the photo of the Patta x Asics shoe in the latest All Gone book? That’s him. Besides he’s also busy with his autonomous work in which he explores the boundaries of todays visual culture. You can see all this on his site http://www.mauricescheltens.com
But first some highlights I’ve selected; This was the first image I’ve seen from him, made in ‘98, that was published in a Dutch magazine:
Last years he developed this unique style in which he succeeds creating these extreme graphic images made out of 3D products. I realy like these. Have a look yourself on the website (especially the just added series for the Uniqlo trendbook 2008)…amazing. For Nike and Vitra:
Here a bit more background stolen from his site: “Maurice Scheltens creates still-lifes that are both hyper realistic and completely artificial. Objects taken from the worlds of commerce, fashion and design are removed from their natural habitats and placed in a new environment, often exposing them to uneasy conditions. Remote controls, haute couture dresses and cut-out pictures of fruits, vegetables and plants are dangling on cords, balancing on other objects or left all alone, lost in a monochrome background.”
“For a recent series of photographs, Scheltens placed some ordinary household items – a fruitbox, a folding crate, a garbage bag – on a turn table and photographed them spinning full-speed. Paradoxically, the resulting blurry objects have a strong pictorial, almost graphic clarity: they are transformed into pure form, pure shape, pure colour. A similar ‘modernist’ aesthetics is apparent in a series of photographs for the magazine ‘Fantastic Man’. Here, Scheltens arranged a collection of knitted sweaters and scarfs in such a way that the geometric patterns and straight lines, planes and surfaces conjure up the 1920’s tradition of Russian constructivism, thus combining the lavish richness of fashion with the puritanical strictness of Modernism.”
Last week I saw the cover of latest issue of Form magazine with a photograph on the cover he did for KSwiss and guess what…our hoodie from our BigMouth Ontour collection is in it! We’re very proud to be a very small part of his work…
