twosee's life

The future of Menswear

2009-02-15T06:43:00.000-08:00

"Charles is wearing a four-button double-breasted Linen suit by Redaelli, a cotton broadcloth shirt by Ascot Chang, a patterned silk tie by Eugenio Venanzi and loafers by Brooks Brothers. Nancy is wearing a silk blouse with mother of pearl sequins and a silk chiffon skirt by Valentino and silver earrings by Reena Pachochi. I'm wearing a six button double-breasted chalk-striped wool suit and a patterned silk tie, both by Louis, Boston, and a cotton oxford cloth shirt by Luciano Barbera. Glen is wearing silk Armani overall and a tiny Mets cap." American Psycho, Bret Easton Ellis

"Charles is wearing a six-button double-breasted Linen suit by Dries Van Noten, a cotton broadcloth shirt by Petar Petrov, a patterned silk tie by Vivienne Westwood and loafers by Givenchy. Nancy is wearing a silk blouse with mother of pearl sequins and a silk chiffon skirt by Gareth Pugh and silver earrings by Ann-Sofie Back. I'm wearing a two-button double-breasted chalk-striped wool suit and a patterned silk tie, both by Raf Simons, Antwerp, and a cotton oxford cloth shirt by Adam Kimmel. Glen is wearing silk Walter Van Bierendonck overall and a Stephen Jones for Walter Van Bierendonck cap." Paris Fashion Week, SS09-AW09

Our first (and last) Advert...

2008-11-30T07:46:00.000-08:00

This is to be our first, and last, advert for the store. We are very sad to announce that AW08/09 will be the last season in this evolution of twosee... We will be closing our doors at the end of January. We would like to thank all of you that have been involved in helping us make it a very special place indeed. We have worked with our long-time collaborator, John Lindquist on the image.

Photography: John Lindquist

Model: Jake

Layout: Anthony Stephinson

And, as the image states, there will be a 'wake' held for the store in february...

twosee launch with 5Preview...

2008-10-30T06:57:00.000-07:00

Special Thanks to Liz and Andrew Blyszak for all of their help...

Weird Love and Invasion for the Live music, and Pandoras Jukebox and Cathal for the Djing...

Thanks to Peroni, Vitamin Water and Jagermeister for their sponsorship...

And of course, thank you 5Preview for everything...

INTERIOR a selection of shorts

2008-09-20T08:59:00.000-07:00

Special thanks to Alex Johns from London Kicks for making this video.

Please take a look at our youtube to see a little more of the films...

A.D.D

2008-09-08T11:17:00.000-07:00

As fashion week blur's into fashion month, you may experience so many brand new sights, smells and sounds it could just fry your senses, but don't fret...this night might just sort you out....

find us at www.myspace.com/youandiandadd. see you soon.

Simon Bookish - EVERYTHING/EVERYTHING

2008-07-28T08:34:00.000-07:00

I've been working over the last few months with a very close friend of mine, Leo Chadburn who performs under the moniker Simon Bookish. I have been a fan of his music since I met him, so I was honoured to be asked to art direct his new album artwork (the cover is featured here). The album is called EVERYTHING/EVERYTHING and features astonishingly complex pop songs composed for a fifteen piece band. It is being released by the german independent label Tomlab in October this year, and when he tours it you must go and take in his live show, it's spell binding.

SIMON BOOKISH website

TOMLAB website

TO SEE... SEE NEW YORK Louise Bourgeois

2008-07-18T08:51:00.000-07:00

Solomon R.Guggenheim Museum

1071 Fifth Avenue (at 89th Street)

NY 10128 0173

June 27th - September 28th

Louise Bourgeois is a full-career retrospective of one of the most important artists of our time. This exhibition, which will fill the entire Frank Lloyd Wright rotunda and one adjacent gallery, will be the most comprehensive examination to date of Bourgeois’s long and distinguished career.

Born almost a century ago, Louise Bourgeois has remained steadfastly at the vanguard of the development of contemporary art for more than 70 years, and continues to create new bodies of work with characteristic energy and restless innovation. Throughout a career that has intersected with many of the leading avant-garde movements of the 20th century, including Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism, and Post-Minimalism, she has remained resolutely committed to a singular creative vision. Although her oeuvre includes painting, drawing, printmaking, and performance, Bourgeois is best known for her sculptures, which range in scale from the intimate to the monumental, and across a diverse array of mediums including wood, bronze, latex, marble, and fabric. Moving freely between abstraction and figuration, she has developed a richly symbolic visual idiom that encompasses totemic forms, ambiguously gendered anatomical fragments, and towering spiders, as well as the assemblages of found objects that are encased in her environmental-scale installations. These images powerfully articulate the psychological imperatives that drive her artistic process, based in large part on memories of a troubled childhood in France and her subsequent struggle to find personal equilibrium throughout her adult life. Louise Bourgeois presents a nuanced exploration of the artist’s distinctive iconography and major themes, in an installation that evokes both an intensely individualized process of introspection, and the universal complexities of the human experience.

This exhibition is organized by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation in association with Tate Modern, London, and Centre Pompidou, Paris.

Support for the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum presentation was provided by the Leadership Committee for Louise Bourgeois: John Cheim and Howard Read; Kathy and Richard S. Fuld, Jr.; Karsten Greve; Xavier Hufkens
Gallery; Tina Kim and Hyun-Sook Lee; Jennifer and David Stockman; Ginny Williams; and Iwan Wirth. (TO BUY TICKETS CLICK HERE)

TO SEE... SEE PARIS Miroslav Tichy

2008-07-18T08:42:00.000-07:00

Centre Georges Pompidou
Place Georges Pompidou
75004 Paris

June 25 2008 - September 22 2008
11h00 - 21h00

This is the first exhibition in France of the photographic work of Czech artist Miroslav Tichy, now more than 80 years old. Only recently discovered, his work reveals the distinctive talent of a marginal and somewhat monomaniacal figure who steadfastly refused the social, political and personal values of the Communist period, form its beginning in 1948 to its end in the late 1980s. Tichý took up photography in the mid-1950s, reinventing it as it were from scratch and building his own cameras and enlargers from shoe-boxes, tin cans, recycled glass and other waste materials.

His timeless and uncategorizable images, shot instinctively or carelessly on handmade cameras with makeshift optics, offer an extraordinary vision of a fantastical, eroticised reality, half real, half dream. Women on the TV screen : these are his single,

obsessional subject.

Rescued from neglect by his neighbour, the film director Roman Buxbaum, in 1989, Tichý's work was first shown at the Sevilla Biennale in 2004. This exhibition at the Centre Pompidou brings together a number of cameras and some hundred photographs, mostly from the Foundation Tichý Ocean.

otnemem

2008-06-12T00:53:00.001-07:00

It’s your birthday today, so I got you a little present. I would have just bought you a beer, but who knows where that would have ended?

So instead, I got you a bell. I think I may have had to pawn your watch to buy it, but what the hell did you need a watch for, anyway?

You’re probably asking yourself, why a bell? In fact, I’m guessing you’re going to be asking yourself that question every time you find it in your pocket. Too many of these letters now. Too many for you to dig back into every time you want to know the answer to some little question.

It’s a joke, actually. A practical joke. But think if it this way: I’m not really laughing at you so much as with you.

I’d like to think that every time you take it out of your pocket and wonder, why do I have this bell? A little part of you, a little piece of your broken brain, will remember and laugh, like I’m laughing now.

Besides, you do know the answer. It was something you learned before. So if you think abut it, you’ll know.

Back in the old days, people were obsessed with the fear of being buried alive. You remember now? Medical science not being quite what it is today, it wasn’t uncommon for people to suddenly wake up in a casket. So rich folks had their coffins outfitted with breathing tubes. Little tubes running up to the mud above so that if someone woke up when they weren’t supposed to, they wouldn’t run out of oxygen. Now, they must have tested this out and realized that you could shout yourself hoarse through the tube, but it was too narrow to carry much noise. Not enough to attract attention, at least. So a string was run up the tube to a little bell attached to the headstone. If a dead person came back to life, all he had to do was ring his little bell till someone came and dug him up again.

I’m laughing now, picturing you on a bus or maybe in a fast-food restaurant, reaching into your pocket and finding your little bell and wondering to yourself where it came from, why you have it. Maybe you’ll even ring it.

Happy birthday, buddy.

taken from Jonathan Nolans "Memento Mori"

chalk their pretty smile

2008-06-06T15:33:00.001-07:00

TO SEE... SEE NEW YORK Teenage Jesus & The Jerks

2008-06-03T09:24:00.000-07:00

@ The Knitting Factory

June 13th

8pm & 11pm

The legendary No Wave pioneers led by a howling Lydia Lunch will perform together for the first time in thirty years. Be sure to be on time though as they will be performing twice on the same night, and they are known for their high energy 30 minute sets loaded with one minute tracks. They will be performing at the launch of Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore’s new book about the New Wave scene. It coincides with the recent release of Mark Master’s eponymously titled book on the same scene. No Wave existed for the briefest of time but its ripples are still being felt on the music and performance scenes. It represented a new kind of unlearning, and its disaffected attitude still resonates with new recording artists like Crystal Castles and Hearts Revolution. After exploding onto the scene in the late seventies and disappearing just as quickly by the beginning of the eighties, it seems to have never really gone away. If you can’t make it to the gig(s) in the Knitting Factory then take a little time out to listen to a few of these bands:

James Chance and the Contortions, Mars, DNA, Teenage Jesus & the Jerks, Arto Lindsay and the Modern Lovers… and, explore the scene around them yourself, you’ll almost certainly be surprised.

TO SEE... SEE LONDON Cy Twombly : Cycles and Seasons

2008-06-03T08:57:00.000-07:00

@ Tate Modern

June 19th - September 14th

For me, the most important painter of the last fifty years: this exhibition will coincide with Cy Twombly's 80th birthday this year. When I was twelve years old I won the award for Classical Civilisation at school and chose a Cy Twombly retrospective monograph as my prize. He has stubbornly created his own pictorial language out of scratches and curves, to the point of obtrusive abstraction; often only giving away a feeling in the title of the piece. Despite being lumped in with the abstract expressionists in the fifties, he has travelled his own path. His work has always been out of context and will therefore never lose its contemporaneity. The colour looks as fresh as the day it was applied, and the scale is often dizzying, with marks ranging from tiny scratches to huge expressive curves and arcs; often punctuated by his distinctive writing style, leaving little clues. The new retrospective promises to span Twombly’s whole career, up to present day, and be the biggest exhibition of Twombly this country has seen in over thirty years. It will include paintings, drawings, sculptures and photographs. The sculptures I find less important as works, but I do feel they serve to inform his shape and line, making them useful sketches.

I am full of anticipation for this show, and cannot remember the last time I was this excited about an artists retrospective, I urge you to go and see it while you can; Twombly shows are very rare things. And, I believe this will be one of the most important of his career.

twosee is now at 21 fouberts place...

2008-06-03T03:30:00.000-07:00

Having outgrown 17 Monmouth Street, we have moved and we are now settling into our new location. The original store is closed and everything is in place at 21 fouberts place: within minutes from Oxford Circus tube, and just off Regent St, Carnaby St, and Conduit St. I think you’ll agree it would be tough to sit more centrally. As loyal customers to the store we thought it only right to give you all an insight. I have been looking at Cy Twombly in the process of designing the new store’s interior. In the last few months I have made the pilgrimage to the Tate Modern 6 or 8 times just to go into the Twombly room and gaze upon his ‘Quattro Stagioni’ (Four Seasons). It seemed fitting to work with images that were ‘seasonal’ in the creation of the interior. In particular it was his use of colour that inspired me. He has an incredible ability to juxtapose the subtlest shade of flesh or linen next to a slash of sunshine yellow, or cadmium red. This contradiction was the starting point.

I am working on the construction with my design partner Andres Ros Soto, whom I worked with two years earlier on the Number 22 store on Carnaby Street. There have been many transitory periods; but the constant in designing the new twosee has always been Twombly and his skill as a colourist and his seemingly haphazard, but in reality, inscrutable sense of composition. It came as such a welcome surprise to have Twombly's retrospective coincide with the new store opening. Just as in a Twombly, the devil is certainlyin the details with our new space. The rails are made from Purpleheart wood, imported from Brazil, and the brass is being made bespoke in Mexico. Purpleheart is a beautiful wood, which is naturally purple when exposed to air. Over time it loses it's hue and becomes a deep reddish grey. The space is cut through with slashes of full-length mirror spliced together by porcelain floor tiles. But. for the rest, you'll have to come in and see... We are open 7 days a week, monday to saturday 11am-7pm and sunday from 1pm to 7pm.

Wolfgang Tillmans

2008-04-21T05:06:00.000-07:00

28th May - 13th July

MAUREEN PALEY.

21 Herald Street

London E2 6JT

t. +44 (0)20 7729 4112

info@maureenpaley.com

Wolfgang Tillmans is one of those rare talents. His work has always had a raw feel to it usually associated with documentary photography. In fact, the first time I met Wolfgang he was doing just that at a friends club night: Kashpoint in Soundshaft, behind Heaven. From that point on he seemed to everywhere... A very affable man, always holding a camera. I didn't think too much of it, until I saw the photographs from that night in his studio, and then later at the Tate Britain. I knew that he was a photographic artist, but to see the images after watching him take these snapshots was beautiful. He had a fascinating ability to seemingly control light. It seems that this documentation of his friends and the people around him has always been a concern for him, often taking them out of context, and utilising the photographic process itself.

"something appropriate about them... something recognisable from the photographs in front of me - the beautiful found within the make-piece and sustained by the most ordinary" Norbert Schoener's portrait from www.tate.org

For this solo exhibition at Maureen Paley Gallery he will be experimenting more with abstraction. Although, I believe it will be abstraction achieved through the use of ordinary things. The work itself that will be on show will be brand new, but we are assured that it will follow the lead of the image you see here. These abstractions seem to have an ethereal quality to them, and this control of light and manipulation of medium is apparent.

Wolfgang Tillmans was the first photographer, and non-british citizen, to win the Turner Prize.

Flykkiller Live at Twisted Licks

2008-04-21T04:24:00.000-07:00

May 2nd 8pm - 3am
229 Great Portland Street
Box Office : 0207 323 7229

Entry is six pounds.

This may be the last chance to see flyKKiller in an intimate environment before they become stellar. Their recent tour of the UK after their collaboration with the store proved to be a huge success. This gig actually came about at the event we worked on, as Mark Beaumont from the NME got them on board. The venue is relatively new, but boasts a 700 capacity, and seems to be gathering momentum...

We'll be there, but this time in a non-performing capacity.
This time it's all about the music.

To buy tickets for this event in advance CLICK HERE.

Jack The Ripper and the East End

2008-04-17T14:45:00.000-07:00

Museum in Docklands

West India Quay

E14 4AL

Booking Line: 0844 980 2151

Ticket prices vary, to book online CLICK HERE.

15th May - 2nd November 2008

Open Daily 10am - 6pm

As it's the first newsletter and this is the first 'to see' section devoted to London being released to you on this global network, the internet, this seemed like an obvious choice. The now mythical figure of Jack the Ripper was the first time that the media and the police had worked together, and it forced both parties' techniques to be innovative. Jack the Ripper was sensationalised by a media that was beginning to realise it's importance and influence over the general public, and it was not long before the newspapers were fighting against each other to try and produce more sensational descriptions of the murders. He represented the birth of the serial killer celebrity and the creation of such a thing by the mass media.

This exhibition 'Jack the Ripper and the East End' is purportedly the first of its kind. Although we have seen countless books written on the subject claiming to be revelatory, with their evidence to support their various claims to have found Jack's identity, none have been universally accepted as the answer. This exhibition goes to great lengths to allow us the general public to see a lot of this evidence first hand. It will give a lot londoners living in the east end a chance to see how their london experience compares to the east end then. The east end traditionally has always been a tough area with a checkered history peppered with violence and crime, and only in recent times has it been experiencing a renaissance with the popularity of the area within creative fields. It is now one of the most desirable areas of london to live, with house prices at an all time high, and becoming comparable to more traditionally moneyed areas of london.

Suffice to say I don't think it's important to bore you with my opinion on the identity of Jack himself, although I am a big fan of Alan Moore and Eddie Campbells graphic novel From Hell, as we have direct contact with the source

material for the first time.

I urge you to take a trip to the Docklands, and go and see this exhibition of artefacts and evidence, and perhaps play sleuth to come to your own conclusions. But, most of all, take it as an opportunity to see a glimpse of the east end as it was, and take comfort in the fact that the whitechapel we know now is a much safer kinder place than the whitechapel that was...

[Tickets can be purchased in advance HERE.]

OVERVIEW: twosee's collaboration with flyKKiller

2008-04-14T04:53:00.000-07:00

FlyKKiller are long time friends of the store. Having been chosen by the Sunday Times as one of the acts set to break through in 2008, who are we to argue. As a group they represent the meeting of minds between Stephen Hilton, who works with David Holmes (most notably on the Free Association project), and Pati Yang, who has had a successful electronic music career in her native Poland since she was 18. They were given a residency at The Fly Bar in London and asked the store to collaborate with them. We promised 'happenings and disturbances' and happenings and disturbances we gave... For the most recent installment in the residency we performed live 'geometry' using compasses, rulers, set squares and all sorts of scholarly equipment. Pati wore head-to-toe Patrik Rzepksi from the store (see the picture below) and David Holmes Dj'ed.

We attached large sheets of paper to places in the venue that were unavoidably walked upon, and then took our time to approach each sheet with the equipment, and drew out complex geometrical shapes. They were shapes that architects throughout the ages have used in the construction of celebrated buildings, drawn in charcoal, so that as they were tread upon they were erased: gone but not forgotten. The audience took a great interest in the geometry and people asked questions, they wanted to give their own opinion on fibonacci, or gnostic symbolism; it felt appreciated and necessary. It seemed like they were genuinely interested in the whole: both the band and the 'happenings and disturbances'.

This was the final chapter in the collaboration, but word has reached us that it may be moved to the Water Rats in Kings Cross and our services may be called upon again!

[The top Pati is wearing is sold out, but the leg pieces and high waisted shorts are available online at our online store HERE - Please check out their debut album 'Experiments in Violent Light' which was released on FLYKKLLR RCRDS at the end of last year, click HERE to buy it from Amazon.]

2008-04-13T13:43:00.000-07:00

Three poems for women (Susan Griffin)

1.

This is a poem for a woman doing dishes.
This is a poem for a woman doing dishes.
It must be repeated.
It must be repeated,
again and again,
again and again,
because the woman doing dishes
because the woman doing dishes
has trouble hearing
has trouble hearing.

2.

And this is another poem for a woman
cleaning the floor
who cannot hear at all.
Let us have a moment of silence
for a woman who cleans the floor.

3.
And here is one more poem
for the woman at home
with children.
You never see her at night.
Stare at an empty place and imagine her there,
the woman with children
because she cannot be here to speak
for herself,
and listen
to what you think
she might say.

NEW twosee STORE

2008-04-09T15:35:00.000-07:00

This is just a taster of what is to come for the new store. We are no longer in the store on Monmouth Street, and the wheels are in motion to move to 21 Fouberts Place to see it in a map, CLICK HERE.

I have been looking at; bees, geometry, the paintings of Cy Twombly, Mayan mosaic, Aztec mozaic, Garden furniture, Islamic Temples, the Getty Centre...

Somewhere in that soup is the answer - I'm pretty excited about it - It should look beautiful.

Otto; Or, Up With Dead people

2008-04-07T02:11:00.000-07:00

"Please allow me to introduce myself, I'm a boy of no wealth and some distaste. My name is Otto. I unlive in Berlin sometimes, sometimes farther north, depending on mood. Then again, I only have one mood: dead. Undead. I find it difficult to make an unliving because I am homeless."

Otto is the new movie by alternative film director Bruce LaBruce. At the screening I attended at the BFI he introduced the movie himself. He described it as a first in a number of ways; it was the first gay zombie movie, and it was his first myspace movie. In a sense these two things are not entirely disconnected from each other in the film as the zombie is used as a metaphor for everyman, and in particular the future everyman: as Bruce says himself "...an allegory for our troubled times".

It's only in the last few months that I have overheard couples arguing about their partner's friends on facebook; hearing the feeble excuses that they give for being friends with particular people, due to the fact that 'x' left a cursory comment on their 'wall'. I have known people that have received 'comments' on myspace the next day after a night out saying how much that 'x' liked their shoes on the previous evening. I know, creepy. Otto seems, in some ways, less socially dysfunctional than these people. Although he does have the rather antisocial habit of devouring things...

As a whole, the movie is a lot more than just a comment on this zombified post-MTV post-myspace culture. The main feeling I left with was sadness. Although in a lot of ways a comedy, underneath this humour it was a sad reflection on the state of future everyman, and it seems in Bruce's eyes, queer everyman.

Rick Owens was responsible for the costumes and the soundtrack included a friend of mine Susanne Oberbeck AKA No Bra.

Derek Jarman at The Serpentine Gallery

2008-03-20T07:39:00.000-07:00

The Serpentine Gallery
(020) 7402 6075

23 February - 13 April 2008
ADMISSION IS FREE

I remember reading an article on Derek Jarman in which he predicted that the site on which he had his studio, Butler's Wharf, would become the focus of a new art world. Butler's Wharf is situated on the southbank where we can now find the Tate Modern, a hub of contemporary art. This ability to prophecise the future of not just one practice, but the many in which he chose to work, goes some way to explain what was and is quintessentially Derek Jarman. Rather than focus on the exhibition itself, I would like to focus on the man, with a list of words.

- saw beauty
- experimental super8
- writer
- the last of england
- tilda swinton
- personal cinema
- throbbing gristle
- artist
- the garden
- liked boys
- suitably camouflaged
- considered
- chroma

ALEXANDER RODCHENKO: REVOLUTION IN PHOTOGRAPHY

2008-03-20T06:16:00.000-07:00

The Hayward, Southbank Centre
The exhibtion runs from 7 February to 27 April 2008

Tickets for this event are £9
Contact the ticket office (9am-8pm) on 0871 663 2500

Alexander Rodchenko (1891-1956) is one of the great figures of early 20th-century avant-garde art, and also one of its most versatile practitioners. Half a century after his death, The Hayward presents the first major exhibition in the UK of Rodchenko’s photographs, featuring some 120 prints and photomontages, as well as poster and magazine designs. The exhibition traces the development of Rodchenko's photography over two decades from the early 1920s, a period when he revolutionised the medium by pioneering a new vocabulary of bold and unusual camera positions, severe foreshortenings of perspective, and surprising close-ups. Take a look - This could be your last chance to see it as the exhibition closes on the 27th of April...

CLICK HERE TO VISIT THE HAYWARD SITE AND BUY TICKETS.

LONDON FASHION WEEK [AW 08] PICTORIAL UPDATE

2008-03-20T02:31:00.001-07:00

Here are a few of the images of JW Anderson's menswear from the presentation at the store:

'visual happenings and disturbances'

2008-03-18T06:42:00.000-07:00

Flykkiller

The Fly Bar

36-38 New Oxford Street

WC1A 1EP

Thursday 10th April

7.30pm - 2am

Tickets are £6 on the door

This will be the second night that we have collaborated with Flykkiller. The first one went very well; we posted 400 post-it notes around the space, and had spherical glitter heads that blinded us : then we were prompted to leave for creating too much of a 'disturbance'! Mission accomplished.

This time the great David Holmes will be DJing, so that shouldn't be missed, alongside of course, Flykkiller themselves. They were great last time and promise to be even darker this time around. To learn a little more about the band visit their website and take a look at our earlier post about them below.Of course, everyone here at the store will be visually 'happening' and 'disturbing' you, so make sure you mark it in your diary. If you would like to attend then email us at:

twosee@twoseelife.com

Please mark the subject of your email "FLYKKILLER APRIL 10TH GUESTLIST" and we shall add you to the cheaper list at £4. Alternatively, click here to buy tickets in advance online.Here are a few pictures from the first event on the 13th March so you know what you are letting yourselves in for:

FLYKKILLER 13th March 2008

2008-02-24T04:37:00.000-08:00

Flykkiller are long time friends of the store. They represent the meeting of minds between Stephen Hilton, David Holmes' partner in The Free Association, and Pati Yang. They have been invited to take over The Fly Bar on New Oxford Street and in turn they invited us to join in. We shall be working as a creative collective, with all of the staff getting involved in some way to provide 'visual happenings and disturbances'. If that doesn't intrigue you enough on it's own then please check out their myspace, and you'll soon realise how great their music is... They were tipped by The Sunday Times as one of the acts to blow in 2008, and so far, they look unstoppable.

To buy advance tickets for this event, CLICK HERE.

We look forward to welcoming you a little more into our world...

It can be seen in the bodies response

2008-02-22T13:56:00.000-08:00

It can be seen in the bodies response, but not in the way the body is presented.

It is made out of ones need to understand something greater than oneself.

LONDON FASHION WEEK [AW 2008]

2008-02-01T12:57:00.000-08:00

This London Fashion Week, we will present the collections of Hannah Martin and JW Anderson in the store on sunday february 10th... The invite image for the event is based on the iconic image created for Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat's collaborative exhibition of paintings in 1985. The poster was shot by our own Amarpaul Kalirai and Anthony Stephinson, and Hannah and Jonathan were all to happy to recreate the famous poses... If their gaze is anything to go by, then the show will be amazing.

If you would like to attend this show, then RSVP is essential to:

twosee@twoseelife.com

Please head your email "LFW FEBRUARY 10TH RSVP"

do[ing] the ultra-violent

2008-01-21T03:46:00.000-08:00

I arrived in Paris on thursday for menswear fashion week, and until saturday, I was completely underwhelmed. There seemed to be a pattern emerging (aside from plaid). All of the shows were slow sombre affairs. The music was barely there, with slow truncated beats, if any beats at all. The models were walking excruciatingly slow and the clothes were soft. I have nothing against soft men's clothing per se, I've even had a pre-delectation towards silk organza, but the soft layers of drapery, the slow footsteps and the anti-beats it was all getting a little too much. I began to hope somebody would send a model down the runway with blood on his knuckles, but the most visceral effects were gaffer tape attached to the backs of shoes and inflatables. It was dull. Menswear has a tendency to be habitual, but this was a new low. I pinned very high hopes on Eric Lebon to deliver, and it didn't look good waiting for the show. There was the obligatory splash of high-camp-fur and 'Street Snappers' taking pictures of the students, and it appeared to be in a gallery. I sat and waited : It happened. The music had beats, it made you want to dance, and the clothes were progressive. Eric has begun to work with more 'lux' fabrication. The nylons from last season were replaced by silks and wools, sometimes silks overlayed on top of wools, then lined in silk. The structure was tighter, and the colour was vibrant! Autumn Winter had mustard! And red! And electric blue! And khaki! And very little black. Even the grey tended to be pale rather than charcoal. All of this without a drop of blood. I left satiated and ready for more. After all, it was only a week or so earlier that Raf Simons had sent out a single

breasted suit that looked like a skinheads dream for Jil Sander. How about some clothes for men to fight in, or more fittingly, use to avoid fights...?! It seems I was not to be disappointed. After an evening of testosterone-filled shows, I tended to my bruised bloodied knuckles with a smile on my face.

Cy Twombly : Cycles and Seasons

2007-12-30T16:27:00.001-08:00

19 June - 14 September 2008

Coinciding with Cy Twombly's 80th year, this will be the first retrospective in the UK for twenty years of the work of this artist. It will present a unique opportunity to examine his paintings, drawings and sculpture across his long and distinguished career. Born in 1928 in Lexington Virginia, Twombly studied in Boston, New York and Black Mountain College, Carolina. In the mid 1950s, following travels in Europe and Africa, he emerged as a prominent figure among a generation of artists working in New York that included Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns. The exhibition will focus on key cycles of related works, multi-part works and some of Twombly's monumental series of paintings interspersed with more intimate rooms devoted to drawings and sculpture.

The Tate Modern : Bankside, London SE1 9TG

020 7887 8888

Open Sunday to Thursday 10.00 - 18.00

Open Friday to Saturday 10.00 - 22.00

[this is taken directly from the Tate Modern website, to book tickets in advance for this exhibtion CLICK HERE]

WOFL

2007-12-17T03:52:00.001-08:00

This is an image from the animation 'WOFL' by David O'Reilly. He made it when he was working for the company Fabrica, who are part of Benetton's Communication and Research Centre. It tells the tale of a young wolf who comes across a dead friend and drags the body to a point high on a hill before settling down into the 'oroborus' position for his hibernation... over the course of his hibernation his comrades body is decomposed and becomes part of the earth and they meet in spirit with the birth of spring. Apparently Fabrica were not very impressed by his work, but I think it is one of the most beautiful pieces of short film I have seen in a long time. He is currently working on a piece entitled 'Serial Entoptics' which features the music of The Knife.

I found the piece while researching the image of the 'oroborus' which is represented by the two circles in our logo. I will be doing something in the near future based around this image using old alchemical carvings and illustrations.

HOT CHRISTMAS by Tim & Barry

2007-12-17T03:06:00.002-08:00

I think that in this case, actions do indeed speak louder then words. Rather than try and explain what Tim and Barry have done for us it's best if you just take a look; click this link and hover over the letter 't' in 'twosee'. Click on it when it changes to the word 'trends' and follow the links to get the full size images with animation... Genius. It seems to capture the essence of christmas itself, with it's over the top tack and it's lack of tact.

We have worked with Tim and Barry several times in the past, most notably on the 'Gollierock' exhibition that was held in the basement of the store from May until July. This exhibition was basically a retrospective of their work from the last five years born out of a series they made for the designer Jean Charles de Castelbajac...

Jean Charles chose Tim and Barry to photograph a series for his exhibition during the summer at the Musee Galliera. This was to be a huge retrospective of his work entitled 'Gallierock'. They were asked to photograph a series of portraits of people from London wearing his archive material which was sent over to the store. There were some astounding pieces sent over, including a life size teddy bear head! As they began to photograph people wearing these 'creations' they called on us to help them chose some London faces for it. Jean Charles was very eager to have a selection of creative people that would understand his 'art' and where he was coming form... We helped them by getting together a number of personalities, including; Matthew Stone, Bishi, James (Boombox), MIA, and our buyer Anthony Stephinson (all of these images are on Jean Charles' website under a section called 'Tim & Barry). These portraits were placed in a corridor-like room with a giant throne at the end. The idea being that you could walk down this 'rogue's gallery' and then sit in the throne for your own fifteen minutes of fame. It seemed fitting that at some point these photographs should be brought back to the people in them, and therefore, to London. We formulated the idea for 'Gollierock' at twosee with this in mind.

Alongside the photographs from Paris, we exhibited their documentary work of the london 'Grime' music scene. The exhibition was sponsored by New Era Caps, who made limited edition caps for us that were sent to the first 200 respondants to the exhibition. The flyer (pictured) for the exhibition featured Jean Charles himself, cementing the close relationship that we have with him.

It seems that the story we have entered with Tim and Barry is far from over, as the HOT CHRISTMAS shoot proves... We tread common ground.

High Praise for Abstraction

2007-12-03T05:23:00.000-08:00

This is an image of the artist Gerhard Richter installing his latest work at Cologne Cathedral in Germany. It is made up of 11,000 squares of coloured glass and looks like a giant pixelated computer screen. Although he was originally approached by the church's head architect to construct a martyr scene, he instead chose to use his painting '4096 Colours' (1974) as the starting point. The result was not merely haphazard, as the 72 colours that were chosen for the work were taken directly from the other works of stained glass in the cathedral. The result is stunningly framed by the gothic tracery of the windows and creates a high tension between the gothic architecture and what is essentially a piece of abstract art. It caused a stir in the church's circles, but the reactions from both the art world and churchgoers have been resolutely positive. The head architect who approached Richter has said it creates; "... a beguiling light which incorporates everything that has been said about spirituality, light and colour." High praise indeed.

The use of the digital image as a symbol in fashion is all to evident these days. It seems as if we weren't too far wrong in the 50's when we thought the digital age would be upon us by now. This season Basso and Brooke have oversize pixelated prints in muted autumnal colours, that distort the body shape with their construction; going forwards into next season Raf Simons and Walter von Bierendonck had two very different views of the future through computer. Raf, the staunch futurist, declared that the 'myspace generation' was dead and looked towards the diasporic traveller as his start point. Of course his product was high future, with shoes closing with high-tech elastics, and the tops made from ruched nylons, the least manmade of fabrications. The result was akin to his computer generated characters running from the game, taking to the hills with their useless equipment, that wouldn't help against the elements. Walter, on the other hand, created his 'characters' literally with computer generation. They were all made in the program Second Life and then the clothes seemed to be forced to fit in with this twisted body image. There were corsets by Mr. Pearl and hats by Stephen Jones that looked like nothing either of them would have created without the help of CG rendering programs... His characters left the computer game and showed their true colours to the world, out of context, but ready for any pixelated fireball that might be thrown at them... And in the future, it doesn't seem so unimaginable.

Basso & Brooke AW07 : Raf Simons SS08 : Walter von Bierendonck SS08

For me, noone has married this digital with the actual as well as Gerhard Richter and his Cologne Cathedral. I would love to see Walter's Sex Clowns taking communion from a priest in a nylon robe... But none of it would be possible without Richter's light illuminating them.

"For Him...

2007-12-02T09:30:00.000-08:00

What men really want. By the fashion designer Gareth Pugh [Independent New Review today]

2. Jeremy Scott's Burger Bar T-shirt, £185.00

This has a graphic of a burger-bar-shaped spaceship with the name "Jeremy" on it; it's classic tongue-in-cheek from someone whose work I always enjoy.

To See, 17 Monmouth Street, London WC2, tel: 0207240 7692, www.twoseelife.com"

It's a shame they spelt the name of the store wrong, and strange as it is part of the web address, but nice to see such an interesting piece in the Independent as a gift idea of What men really want... If you'd like to take a look at it on the online store then CLICK THIS LINK.

Also, to see the article properly click on the image and it will appear in a more readable size.

Death of a Maiden

2007-11-28T01:21:00.000-08:00

A very good friend of ours died yesterday. She had been a great addition to the store and her presence on the counter will be missed...

She was given to us by the kind Bloomsbury Flowers on Great Queen Street. I think for christmas we'll just settle for trailing ivy, but in the new year we'll be looking for another friend like her.

*** WE JUST RECEIVED A NEW FLOWER ***

30/11/2007

She is certainly orchidaceous, but I'm not completely sure of which type. She is yet to flower but as soon as she does I will post some photographs so she may be immortalised. The lovely people at Bloomsbury Flowers are too good to us!

Cy Twombly

2007-11-26T09:41:00.000-08:00

Recently, Cy Twombly has been occupying a lot of head space in twosee... His aesthetic perfectly describes the way we feel going into SS08.

After looking at his Wikipedia entry, we were delighted to see he still inspired people to forget themselves...

"...On July 19, 2007, police arrested artist Rindy sam after she kissed one panel of Twombly's tryptich Phaedrus. The Panel was an all white canvas, and was smudged by Sam's red lipstick. She is to be tried in a court in Avignon in October for 'Voluntary degradation of a work of art'. Sam defended her gesture to the court:

"[trans.]...All I did was a kiss. It's a gesture of love, when I kissed, I wasn't thinking, I thought that the artist would've understood... This gesture was an artistic act provoked by the power of Art."

Let's just say that as we approach the new season, the store will be undergoing a serious transformation. The interior will be inspired in part by the beauty of Cy Twombly's paintings.

Let's hope that we don't fall foul through our own unrequitted love though. It seems that Rindy was made to pay for her 'Act of love', as the defence claimed:

"...Agnes Tricoire, lawyer for the plaintiffs, said the kiss was "as aggressive as a punch," causing damage that was just as hard to restore.

"I do not share the same vision of love. For me love requires the consent of both sides,""

She was ordered to pay 1500 euros on November 16th, as well as a symbolic one euro to the artist himself for damages...

twoseelife.com

2007-11-21T10:30:00.000-08:00

... so the new website finally went live. Please check it out! It's been split into two parts; the main site, where you can find out a little about the store and it's people, and the online store. The online store was illustrated by Lovisa Burfitt whose line, Burfitt, we carry too. She's very well-known in Paris and her native sweden as an illustrator and it's been a real honour to work with her. She illustrated the main opening page and the titling... [to link directly to the store go to here.] I love her illustrations, but despite her promises she gave the naked man and woman dignity! For the main site we are doing something quite different... Every month there will be an editorial based 'trends' section. We'll be working with a lot of people who are close to the store. The first photoshoot has been photographed by our very own Amarpaul Kalirai, and it's a gothic inspired shoot called 'Broken Flowers'. He's been shooting a lot recently for Super Super magazine, as well as working with the ethical brand Amana. The photograph here is the opening shot from the shoot, isn't it great? The response has been really positive so far... At the beginning of december there will be another photoshoot going live; think Benny Hill, Brighton saucy postcards and cheeky traditional english smut... It's all getting a little bit 'Carry On Christmas'

... the illustrations Lovisa Burfitt made for our online store ...

2007-11-21T01:00:00.000-08:00

This hybrid image is the image that is being used for press. It features both the male and female forms that Lovisa illustrated, and makes it more blatant that the circles in the online store, overlayed onto the images, represent the twosee brand.

She also illustrated the 'Mens' and 'Womens' titles when you select them from the opening screen...

We have worked with Lovisa in the past, as she showed a collection of large scale drawings in the store last year. Alongside them she showed her handmade masks in the window on a selection of floating heads! During fashion week we threw a party with her and showcased her AW06/07 range.