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The book contains a colorful set of images, as well as interviews with drag-queens, drag-kings, gender-benders and just awesome-looking people in their best.

The photos try to capture the real essence of the people in their everyday surroundings and environment. Most of the pictures are taken inside of their apartments, while they are dressing up – putting on their make-up, trying on their costumes. It also contains a series of nudes. The beauty of the photos lies in the fact that none of them are manipulated. What you see is what you get. There is no formula, no restrictions – only the apartment walls, where the pictures are taken, but which leave a great deal of freedom to the people, as the camera observes their everyday routine.

The interviews try to show how fascinating and crazy the lifestyle is that they are really living. In a very immediate and personal way, stripped of every artifice. They give us an image of true meaning of the mentality of the men/women, who like to dress up as an opposite sex member.

Most of the drags have developed several characters for themselves, throughout the years. With those different characters they are also trying out multiple lifestyles. They are also giving some advice on becoming a drag yourself (You should start with picking a name with a sexual slant to it).

The photographer captured the people from the circles he moves around in himself, which makes the images and the interviews extra intimate and open. It is truly possible to peak inside of that totally different universe. Here the photographer not only plays the role of the professional observer but is also personally involved in their lives. He succeeded on capturing all that joy and all of those sufferings. The involvement leads to extraordinary images – they are fascinating, than again touching. They show all the glitter and vanity, but there is also a great deal of vulnerability and fragility.

Photographers attitude and ethics has lead to images, which involve us but also force us to maintain a certain distance. Despite the often intimate images, which are shown, nowhere do we experience an invasion of the privacy of those portrayed. The viewer experiences respectful involvement and a bit of shock.

It is an eclectic approach, trying to show the true lifestyle of the people, whom we all have heard about, but then really know so few about. The book involves you to the magical world of people, who like to go extreme with their appearance. Doing that for just the fun of it and also for the name of entertaining. Their everyday life is all about standing out, competing with each other on different stages and situations and then again staying true to their own beliefs and dreams. It is a mixture of so many things, which lead us to a whole other level of seeing the world and the people around us.

this post is part of he subjective library project "Unopened Book"
the book can be found at the Rietveld library : catalog no : 793.6-cher-1

Serge Onnen is a contemporary Dutch visual artist living in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.  He works with the concept of “99% drawings – 1% text”. In fact, the only text is the index and the blurb. His first book, or rather collection of drawings, came out as an appendix on Zingmagazine #16. The second one is called Calligraffiti or “manual for hands”. The third one is called Drawings on Geology, composed in the same way as the preceding ones: hardly any text and a collection of black and white drawings, related in some way to a central theme. The drawings for each book were obtained by requesting material around a specific theme in the last book published. The material comes from all over the world, is from all times and all types of persons.

Zware zakken  (heavy bags in English) is a collection of black and white drawings, images and texts becoming visual forms, in some way or another related to the theme: heavy bags. Bags can be actually heavy, or have a heavy content. They can be relatively heavy, because they are of thin material and filled to the top or just because they are big bags. Bags can also be perceived as being physically heavy, for example when you have to climb a mountain carrying one which is in fact not so heavy at all. Bags can also just look heavy, or even just feel heavy, while in fact they are not. So the concept of “heavy” offers a great scale of interpretations and surprising ways to express this.

Bags are here in many forms and constructions, meant for a wide range of different purposes: from the grey dirt-bag to the full-print promotion shopping-bags as we know them in our throw-away society. From sleeping-bags for the girl with the sweet dreams, to body-bags leading to nightmares for the relatives of the dead soldier in it;  both weighing the same amount of kilograms, but one feeling light as a feather and the other one: unbearable.

This mix of interpretations of two simple words served as starting point in the creation of new and the search for existing works of art, or at least interesting artifacts. In different cultures the same drawing can be looked at in a different way. The skinny donkey almost crawling under two overloaded big-bags for seven days a week is the only way to survive for his boss and therefore a fact of life in Pakistan, for us this same picture is disgusting. But on the other hand, if people in Pakistan knew what is in our grey dirt-bags, especially the wasted food, they would be equally disgusted.

The next issue will be “Marking”.
Please find and send drawings or of text becoming form on this subject to: Serge Onnen, Prinsengracht 653, 1016 HV Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a database or retrieval system, or published, in any form or in any way, electronically, mechanically, by print, photo print, microfilm, or and other means without prior written permission from the Publisher.

this post is part of he subjective library project "Unopened Book"
the book can be found at the Rietveld library : cataloque no : -onn-2

Experiments with Truth: An encyclopedia of the modern art.

By experimenting in diversity within styles, themes and waves, we are able to see beyond the frame within several art movements.

This encyclopedia is build up out of several factors which are based on retrospectives of “modern art” (paintings, sculptures and architecture).

Different aspects of these movements are interesting throughout time. From the past till the present we are able to calculate at least 200 different waves/movements fixated within the modern and authentic art scale.

For instance:

Avant Garde – Impressionism – Neo Impressionism – Art-Nouveau – Symbolism – Post Impressionism – Jugendstill – Fauvism – Expressionism and so on

Faking of paintings is a quite interesting theory, and we have to be carefully by finding a truly result. A lot of works can be seen as an original, but this isn’t the actual case.

The famous faker: Elmyr de Hory (A Hungarian painter and art forger that claimed to be the one that sold over thousand works to support art galleries all over the world) is one of the persons that can be seen as a truly highlighted subject throughout the history!

In this book 200 paintings are not only the fixation point of art waves and movements, but also the experimenting point of view is important throughout the works of art, because the real question will always be: are they fake or are they real?

An amount of works are categorized in a chronological alphabet, nearly fully focused on paintings, sculptures and architecture from the modern time.

Theories are also involved in the book. From Fakers like Elmyr to a painter-movement like Der Blaue Reiter.

From 1860 till the year 2012 we are still busy with theories about artists and fixation on the main essences.

In the book there is also a formulation about important collections from the artist, also published several book titles, revealing name of the author, title and date, that are categorized within the movement. Also quotes written by an artists that was connected to the mentioned wave/movement. Some quotes are written by “Situationists” like: Guy Debord and Isidore Isou. Also different manifesto’s are mentioned from for instance: Hugo Ball (Dadaist) and Luigi Russolo (Futurist).

In short: Interesting views on the visualized and textual context of the art-world!

this post is part of he subjective library project "Unopened Book"
the book can be found at the Rietveld library : catalog no : 705.8-doc-11 IV