Anne Geene

Teratology is the scientific study of abnormalities. In this exhibition, artists Anne Geene (NL, 1983) and Lana Mesić (Yugoslavia, 1987) come together around their shared interest in things that are irregular, overlooked, or don’t quite fit in.

From: Bestiary

Collage van Google-maps saletietbeelden van de zee. Uit: Bestiary

Slangenhuid. Slang die in zijn eigen staart bijt. Uit: Bestiary

Photo's of a girl pretending to trip over things in the public domain. From: Bestiary

Bestiaries are ancient manuscripts that weave together tales of every kind of creature—real or imagined—alongside stories of stones and trees. Rather than striving for naturalistic description, these texts cast the world as a mirror of divine truth. Offering moral lessons through the lives and the natures of beings great and small, all bestiaries trace their lineage to a Greek work known as Physiologus. Written sometime between the second and fourth centuries AD by an unknown author, it grew into one of the most cherished and widely read books of the Middle Ages. In this work, Geene and De Nooy create a contemporary photographic bestiary inspired by that ancient source. Drawing on quotations from a recent translation and blending found images with their own, they breathe new life into this mystical text. Though their approach is neither Christian nor didactic, the behaviours revealed by the creatures in Bestiary still offer stories from which moral insights may quietly emerge.

All heart-shaped leaves found during a residency in Portugal (nov-jan 2021).

Leaves picked on one day, from one individual plant.

Leaves picked from one plant on one moment in time.

This monography offers an introduction to the life, work and opinions of the universal photographer U. (1955 – 2016), a man who produced more pictures of more different subjects in more different styles than any other photographer to date. In U., numerous features of other photographers, philosophers, scientists and collectors can be recognized, but closest to his character may well be the protagonists of Flaubert’s novel Bouvard and Pécuchet. Like them, U. had a tendency to copy, collect, combine and study, and, like them, he lacked common sense. This resulted in remarkable methods, peculiar preferences and naïve solutions to self-made problems. Besides being a monograph of U., The Universal Photographer reflects Geene & De Nooy’s view on the art of photography, characterised by relativism and even absurdism, but most of all it is a celebration of photography. Its primary quality – to copy – is taken to extremes through U.’s straightforward approach. Reading the history of photography as photos of photos of photos, U.’s work may well be an invitation for even more photos. In the words of Bouvard and Pécuchet: “No reflexion! Let’s copy!”

from: The Universal Photographer

from: The Universal Photographer

Ornithology refers to the scientific study of birds, including their physiology, classification, ecology and behaviour. Due to their visibility and colourful appearance, birds are a popular subject of both the sciences and the visual arts – photography in particular. With their pseudo-scientific approach hunter-collectors Geene & De Nooy defy the borders between these disciplines. Their classification of bird pictures exhibits the humorous outcome of creative and associative thinking, with every section of Ornithology opening new perspectives on birds. Geene & De Nooy manifest themselves as rare birds in the world of bird photography, dominated as it is by people with the ‘classic’ aesthetic view. Many of the birds they shot are dead, others are representations and sometimes only their building material or excrement appears. Ornithology may be seen both as a photographer’s study of birds and as an ornithologist’s excursion into photography. The book is highly recommended by Charles Darwin, Harper Lee, Humphrey Bogart, Charlie Parker and Woody Woodpecker, amongst many others.

from: Ornithology

uit: Nieuwe feiten

Eternal Herbarium is a combination of preserved plant material and its photographic reproduction. This creates an eternal comparison between the original colour (captured at the time of picking) and its degenerating organic equivalent.

from: Encyclopedia of an Allotment