Fashion photography @ FOAM: Inez Van Lamsweerde & Vinoodh Matadin

/////////////////////////////|\/|\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\

REVIEW Exhibition 'Pretty Much Everything' - Inez van Lamsweerde & Vinoodh Matadin , a retrospective (1985-2010).

/////////////////////////////|\/|\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\

Have you ever wondered whats going on in an artist's mind? How he or she thinks or how it looks? Is it messy or structured? Or is there pretty much everything floating around?

The Museum of Photography Amsterdam FOAM can give us an impression. Fashion-art-photographers Inez van Lamsweerde (1963) and Vinoodh Matadin (1961) have tried to visualise what has been in their heads for 25 years with more than 300 pictures, varying from blown-up photos, laminated images, posters and tiny pieces-of-art framed in a shiny silver list. Walking through the rooms and alleys of FOAM, you walk so to speak through a combination of two brains. 

Unlike other overview exhibitions, Inez & Vinoodh's work is not presented in a chronological order or in themes. Instead they have chosen for a more intuitive approach and mixed it all up: a glossy fashion spread for Vogue of 2007 next to a black-and-white portrait of a Hollywood actor or a framed Polaroid of 1993. It’s about context and interconnection between images. And all images represents their visual language, their identity, and their professional journey. Inez & Vinoodh described the exhibition like 'ongoing sentences, without a beginning and an end, where every word is an image’.

The duo have explored unique ways to stretch the definition whether it is called fashion, fine art, photography or commercial work. Therefore this exhibition shows how exciting the distinction (and tension) between these conflicting fields can be. It is an overview of indeed pretty much everything this internationally well-known fashion duo have accomplished so far. Don't be too late to visit the exhibition during the summer, mid September 2010 the exhibition will end.

Background artists

Inez van Lamsweerde (1963) and Vinoodh Matadin (1961) both studied at the Rietveld Art Academy in Amsterdam. Eager for more fashion, Van Lamsweerde specialized in Fashion Photography and Matadin in Design & Styling. Art have brought them together, professionally and passionately.

This broad luggage of fine art, fashion, visual and design have excluded the duo from other fashion photographers. But more characteristic is their edgy integration of commercial advertorial work with the fine arts, two opposites in the eye of fashion. 

Watch the video for the interview with Vinoodh Matadin & Inez van Lamsweerde during the openings-ceremony last June, 2010. They give feedback on the way of presentation, on their cooperation and their work. Recommended to see this video before you step into their heads. 
 

Limited Edition Paper made by M/M (paris) ! Only € 7,95, a real collectors item.

Exclusively made for this exhibition, M/M (paris) designed a newspaper filled with 25 superposters, an image for every year Vinoodh and Inez are together, in work and in love. And M/M have designed a custom-made typography them, which is spread through the exhibition and is on the back of every poster as well. So, buy 25 images of Inez & Vinoodh for only €7,95. For sale at FOAM or via their webshop.

Text and pictures by Marij Elisabeth Rynja, written in order of Amsterdam International Fashion Week.

Where: FOAM, Keizersgracht 609, Amsterdam | When: untill 15th of September 2010 | Price: 10 euros | Info: www.foam.nl | Free guided tour on 15th of July (this thursday!) at 19:30 hrs.