SCHELTENS & ABBENES Having worked together on various projects (and having been a couple for many years), photographer Maurice Scheltens (1972) and visual artist Liesbeth Abbenes (1970) have decided to consolidate their professional collaboration. We are delighted to introduce to you: Scheltens & Abbenes.
Scheltens & Abbenes are the sum total of the unique talent of a still-life photographer and the creative craftsmanship of an artist/stylist. Technical perfection added to individual handicraft, strong pictorial clarity in addition to tailor-made styling. Combining their distinct but partly overlapping fields of expertise, Scheltens & Abbenes create commissioned photographs for cultural institutions and large companies (Vitra, Nike, Hermes, Viktor & Rolf) and editorials for magazines (Fantastic Man, Wallpaper, Another Magazine).
The specialty of Scheltens & Abbenes is to meticulously arrange objects - chairs, glassware, shirts, perfume bottles - into configurations that have a strong two-dimensional or graphic character. A good example is a series of photograps for the magazine Fantastic Man. Here, they arranged a collection of knitted sweaters in such a way that the patterns and straight lines conjure up the 1920's tradition of Russian constructivism, thus combining the lavish richness of fashion with the puritanical strictness of Modernism.
Essential to their work is the process in the studio where they construct their settings. A laborious process, in which Scheltens & Abbenes continuously move things around, painstakingly join pieces together and adjust little details. During this series of steps they take numerous Polaroids and study them together intensively in order to arrive at the right composition. Scheltens & Abbenes take absolute liberty with their objects. Instead of presenting the objects as plain sellable products, they often manipulate and utilize them as building blocks for new compositions. The autonomous artistic quality of the photograph always has to prevail.
In some photographs Scheltens & Abbenes reduce their objects to clean geometric lines, showing an understanding that the settings will ultimately only exist as a two-dimensional image. This can be seen for instance in the work for Hermes, in which a collection of orange packing boxes is placed in straight alignments, creating sharp rectangular shapes and figures In other works their focus is more on arranging objects in such a way that they form an entirely new object altogether. These new objects could be surreal creatures made from clothing or cosmopolitan tower blocks made from perfume bottles.
A recent development in Scheltens & Abbenes's practice is their movement towards the world of design. What started with a one-off project for Droog Design - the making of a photogram tablecloth in 2005 - seems to be getting more important in their joint undertaking. During a work period at the Grafische Werkplaats in Amsterdam they made a silk-screened folding screen and most recently they realized a collaborative projects with the Dutch designer couple Scholten & Baijings and design manufacturer Vitra.
Scheltens & Abbenes deliberately choose to operate both in the field of applied and autonomous art and use them as breeding ground for one another. By the same logic, they will also continue their individual practices, Maurice Scheltens as a still-life photographer, Liesbeth Abbenes as an artist making wall tapestries.
See more work by Scheltens & Abbenes HERE
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