Sara Cwynar

Mesmerising, complex work by Candian photographer Sara Cwynar, who catalogues various histories - personal and broader-reaching - as well as exploring theories of colour and composition in her work. Sometimes working solely in-camera and other times mixing media and working on top of her final images, Cwynar attempts to catalogue diverse subjects in a dark take on the time honoured tradition of vanitas still life work. Her work "involves making strange versions of familiar images, finding examples of pre-existing 'archives' in the world waiting to be documented."

And for a recent project at Foam in Amsterdam, Cwynar undertook something even more ambitious: Everything In The Studio (Destroyed) entailed taking all of the materials in her studio at one time, documenting each item and arranging it into a digital plan where she could fit the entire contents into a corner of the gallery. She attempted to install the archive in the gallery according to the plan, which quickly began to fall apart as images and objects were not how she had remembered them. She left the materials for a month, then destroyed the whole thing so that she would be forced to purge the archive - allowing herself to start anew, and documenting everything only with a camera. All that remains of this studio’s worth of materials are the images seen at the bottom of this post - before, detail, and after. 

All images © Sara Cwynar

Maurizio Cattelan & Pierpaolo Ferrari

Since kissing goodbye to being an artist in 2011, with a fantastical retrospective at The Guggenheim in New York, Maurizio Cattelan has devoted his time to creating weird, fantastic, sinister and sometimes erotic imagery with his partner-in-crime photographer Pierpaolo Ferrari for their magazine ToiletPaper. Its an amazing and unique publication, funded by various open-minded patrons, which is gradually evolving into a multi-merchandise brand. The madcap creativity of the two together is something to behold, and its worth seeking out the recently published book of ToiletPaper's work to date for an eyeball-searing visual feast. 

For their latest project the Greek collector and philanthropist Dakis Joannou commissioned them to photograph his unparalleled collection of Radical Design furniture in their own unique way. The initial idea was to pay homage to Playboy magazines of the late Sixties and early Seventies, when Hugh Hefner promoted the most ambitious product and architectural designs alongside his pneumatic bunnies. But this being ToiletPaper, they took the idea and made it their own, creating a crazy, sexy world where cake, wigs, pasta and fetish-wear share the billing with the girls and the furniture. Shown here is a preview of just a few images from the series which will be published at the end of 2013. 

And if you want to see even more, a film we made on-set can be found HERE.

All images © ToiletPaper/Maurizio Cattelan & Pierpaolo Ferrari
Video © James Reid

Annabel Mehran

Capturing the fantasies and daydreams of a certain wealthy East Coast American demographic - the settings, the clothes and the props speak volumes - Annabel Mehran creates rich, romantic images that could be straight from the stories of Cheever or Salinger. The listless gilded youth, the beds, dunes and glades, the expensive linens and shirts, the soft furnishings and sliverware. All these markers place Mehran's protagonists in a seemingly luxurious world, yet for the most part these are lost, lonely souls, daydreaming of who-knows-what. Very interesting work indeed...

All images © Annabel Mehran