A few weeks after our interview, Erik Kessels has already released a new project. It’s part of the book series ‘In Almost Every Picture’, focusing on found amateur photographs with a sequenced narrative. ‘Sexy Sofa’ is the last of these experimental researches, and it has a particular link with our uncommon everyday. Indeed, the pictures in the book are all shot indoors, turning the living room in an unexpected cinema set. That way, even your wife can became an Hollywood star.
Erik Kessels is a Dutch artist, designer and curator with great interest in photography. Kessels is since 1996 Creative Partner of communications agency KesselsKramer in Amsterdam and London.
As an artist and curator, Kessels has published over 75 books of his “re-appropriated” images and has written the international bestseller Failed It!
Kessels made and curated exhibitions such as ‘Loving Your Pictures’, ‘Mother Nature’, ‘24HRS in Photos’, ‘Album Beauty’, ‘Unfinished Father’ and ‘GroupShow’.
His mid-career retrospective was shown in Turin, Düsseldorf, Budapest and he exhibited this year in the SFMOMA. He was called “a visual sorcerer” by Time Magazine and a “Modern Anthropologist” by Vogue (Italia).
About ‘Sexy Sofa’ – words by Erik Kessels:
We like to christen our stuff; our kids, our boats, a new home. Often we celebrate when we use something for the first time, to mark the occasion and its appearance in our lives. There are traditional ways to do this, and then the not so familiar, personal rites of passage we create for ourselves and our things.
In 1965 Noud and Ruby decided to pimp up their living room. They refurnished the fire place opting for a conical, mid-century design that resembles a witches hat. The second new addition was a sofa; a tufted corner piece in a classy shade of beige velveteen. Not a right angled design but a soft sensual curve snaking around the corner of the room. Not to mention, it had tassels. Unsurprisingly, Noud and Ruby were smitten with their revamped living room and wanted to give it a christening all of their own…
Their new home improvements set the scene for what became a sincere and erotic collaboration between Noud and Ruby that spanned almost 10 years, documenting fashion and fantasy and ultimately prompting us to ask ourselves: who are we behind closed doors and what sides of ours identities do we choose to conceal, even if they give us pleasure and satisfaction. These images were never intended to be revealed beyond the walls of their living room and yet now we have them in front of us.
And that’s one of the wonderful things about photography; it gives us control over our legacy, of how we want to be portrayed and what imprint of ourselves we want to leave behind. Through Noud’s camera Ruby becomes a star taking centre-stage. Yet in almost every picture, the repeat performances of the sofa and the fireplace elevate them to co-star status. These inanimate characters don’t need to say anything because their presence does enough, for where would Ruby be without them.
