Erik Kessels

Happy Birthday to Erik Kessels, who turns 60 today. 

Erik Kessels

Happy Birthday to Erik Kessels!

Holiday Mail

 

As one of the Christmas Cards that arrived today noted, an upshot of the lengthy Canada Post strike in November and December of last year is that the holidays are now somewhat extended. I was going to save some of these until December of next year, but I think I’ll post them this week, like the overly enthusiastic friend who wishes everyone Happy New Year well into March. 

Erik Kessels, Anthony Burrill, Malcolm Goldie | BIRDS

Erik Kessels, Anthony Burrill, Malcolm Goldie

BIRDS 

Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Self-published, 2020

12” vinyl record

Edition of 300

A single sided 12” vinyl record containing a twenty minute composition combining bird song and aeroplane recordings, collaged into a series of pleasant and unpleasant sounds. The "unsettling listening experience" featuring amongst others the House Sparrow, Airbus A320, Blue Tit, Boeing 777X, Wood Pigeon and a Cessna 172. 

Erik Kessels and Scanner | Archive Land

Erik Kessels and Scanner 

Archive Land

Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Self-published, 2019

12 x 14.5 x 2.5 cm.

Edition of 200 signed and numbered copies

A boxed edition consisting of a set of cards by Kessels and an audio cassette by Robin Rimbaud, who produces music and sound under the name Scanner. 

"Archive Land opened at the Museum of Applied Arts in Cologne in May 2019, as part of the Artist Meets Archive series for the Photoszene Festival. Like many museums the MAKK holds a wealth of materials that are hidden away in a dark basement and rarely see the light of day. So, for this special project Dutch artist Erik Kessels was given access to this unique collection and chose images from their photo collection. Reproducing these photographic plates to enormously oversized playing cards he built a huge house of cards, which you could visit inside the museum. 

To accompany this Erik invited Scanner to create a sound installation to translate the archive into sound. He began by thinking about the photos themselves and what music might have been listened to at the time when they were taken. He settled on the work of Beethoven and replayed a very famous sonata of his on the piano, extremely slowly. To this he added all the sounds that might emanate from the photographs themselves, so the ticking of clocks, footsteps, horses, someone coughing, a crowd in the street, church bells, birdsong and more. All of this was then filtered through a kind of sonic lens so that the sounds appear and disappear, as does the music, suggesting a dreamlike quality to the room, moving the past to the present. 

The installation resembled an archetypal dilapidated historical building. Just like an archive, these structures are often hidden away and difficult to access – relics from bygone times. Walking through these motifs ranging from the Middle Ages to the 19th century and letting the mind wander encouraged visitors to perceive these usually hidden visual worlds in a new way. 

The pattern collection of the Cologne Museum of Applied Arts is part of the museum’s comprehensive Graphics Collection that was built up with the founding of the museum in 1888. The pattern collection comprises approx. 25,000 illustrations from the Middle Ages to the 19th century and served as a visual guide to ‘good taste’: photographs, prints or clippings from publications showing primarily handcrafted objects of all types, but also historical buildings, cityscapes, landscapes, interiors, expeditions, botanical motifs or animals. 

Erik Kessels (born 1966 in Roermond, Netherlands) lives and works in Amsterdam. He is creative director and head of the KesselsKramer advertising agency in Amsterdam, which he founded together with Johan Kramer in 1995 as a “legendary and unorthodox” communications agency. Since 2000, he has also published the Useful Photography magazine and has edited several books, for example Missing Links (1999), The Instant Men (2000), In almost every picture (2001-2013) and Wonder (2006). www.kesselskramer.com 

Artist Meets Archive was the central exhibition program of this year's Photoszene-Festival in cooperation with Museum Ludwig, MAKK - Museum for Applied Arts Cologne, Kцlnisches Stadtmuseum, Photographische Sammlung/SK Stiftung Kultur,  Rautenstrauch-Joest-Museum and Rheinisches Bildarchiv at Kaune Contemporary. 

The exhibition was accompanied by playing cards and a music cassette in a special collector's box (200 copies, signed by Erik Kessels and Scanner), available only at the museum box office at the time. These are now the last remaining copies available and will not be reprinted."

Erik Kessels, Sergio Smerieri | In Almost Every Picture 17 - Carlo And Luciana

Erik Kessels, Sergio Smerieri

In Almost Every Picture 17 - Carlo And Luciana

Amsterdam, The Netherlands: KesselsKramer, 2021

104 pp., 16 x 20 cm., softcover

Special edition size of 100 signed and numbered copies

The founding partner and creative director of ad agency KesselsKramer has been scouring flea markets for photographs for years now, amassing an unrivalled collection of amateur photography which -  as a collection - contains a sequenced narrative. He has released 18 volumes to date of the In Almost Every Picture series. 

The 17th features Carlo and Luciana a couple who document their travels with pictures of each other in the same spot, but never together. The book opens with some black & white snapshots of the pair in their twenties or thirties, on a road trip. These are followed by some blank pages to indicate the passing of time. Following this, the images are in colour, of the now much older couple. But again, they do not appear together. One poses (on a beach, in front of a castle, by a hotel pool, in front of some ancient ruins, eating a meal) and then the other poses the same way for the second shot. 

The only picture of the pair together is available in the limited edition of the book, as a tipped-in vinyl record postcard. The b&w picture of Carlo with his arm around Luciana accompanies an audio track of Carlo being interviewed about his travels with her. 

(see also: https://artistsbooksandmultiples.blogspot.com/2023/01/arthur-kleinjan-paris-looks.html)

Erik Kessels | In Almost Every Picture #3

Erik Kessels
In Almost Every Picture #3
Amsterdam, The Netherlands: KesselsKramer/Artimo, 2004
178 pp., 15.5 × 20 cm., softcover
Edition size unknown

Self-portraits of deer taken with a motion sensitive camera. With a text by Tyler Whisnand.

Note: various sources list the page count as 148, 178 and 224.

Erik Kessels | In Almost Every Picture #4

Erik Kessels
In Almost Every Picture #4
Amsterdam, The Netherlands: KesselsKramer Publishing, 2005
144 pp., 20 × 15 cm., softcover
Edition of 2000

"Two sisters, sororal twins, grow up right before our eyes, diligently arranging dresses, coats, belts, shoes, gloves and often hairstyles that are identical [...]

The time is World War II. Not far away from these images of a natural joy, immense tragedy unfolds.Theweight of this time in our history threatens the edges of these photographs, these giggles, these smiles, and intensifiesthe preciousness found here in almost every picture. A photograph taken to remember, remembers more as the scopeof our memory increases.Despite our best efforts, the tragedy manages to invade the photographs. We see a space left for her, forthe twin sister who is gone. We can only imagine that her absence is due to what was happening, what has happened. The feeling is identical."

- publisher's statement

Erik Kessels | Read Naked

Erik Kessels
Read Naked
Marche, Italy: Skinnerboox, 2019
148 pp., 16 x 24 cm., hardcover
Edition size unknown

Designed by Geraldine MacDonald and Kessels, this collection of found photographs of naked readers is available from the publishers, here, for 25 Euros.

Given Kessels' background in advertising, it is unsurprising that he launched a standalone site where readers can upload their own nude photographs of themselves reading: www.readnaked.org.

Erik Kessels | In Almost Every Picture 13

Erik Kessels
In Almost Every Picture 13
Amsterdam, The Netherlands: KesselKramer Publishing, 2014
180 pp., 15.5 xx 20 cm., soft cover
Edition size unknown


"This is a short history of photography’s most common mistake: part of the photographer’s hand appearing in frame. These pages trace an error that hasn’t dimmed with the digital era, but appears as widespread now as it was back in the form’s black-and-white prehistory.

Our tour covers family snaps from the standard “say cheese” portrait to a straight-laced grandmother playing a very un­-straight laced game of poker. It encompasses holiday snaps and seventies hair and smiles soaked in decades-old sunshine. But whoever they are, whenever they are, our subjects are weirdly cropped by thumbs, sometimes fingers, occasionally a whole palm. Digits loom massive; mysterious blurs like a ghost or UFO drifting into shot."

- press release

Available from the publisher for 25 Euro, here.