Outer Space Press: Reset, Renew, Revive
WORDS: FRÉDÉRIC FOREST
When the two of us established Outer Space Press, we dreamed of being independent both as artists and as bookmakers. Over multiple years, we have collected and come to rely on a unique combination of equipment, which allows us to produce hand-crafted, small edition books entirely in our own studio. Working with our hands on each copy of the titles that we publish leaves room for experimentation and gives us a sense of freedom. Simultaneously, our studio naturally sets certain limitations. These are defined by the types of machines we own and use, the amount of labor required to move each project from conception to release and simply the physical space available to us. We have learned to not only live within these boundaries but to celebrate them. They are the limits that create our specific framework, and they inform the type of publishing and art practice we have chosen to build.
In many ways, we create for ourselves. We are our own audience and in turn, we have developed our own niche. As two artists with respective backgrounds in printmaking and photography, we specialize in photo books, reinterpreting the medium in our own unconventional and wild way. In a field dominated by an overwhelming demand for excellence in print production, we instead turn towards the less controllable. We look for beauty hidden in imperfections. Art, for us, is about the things one does not and cannot know, about finding and highlighting what usually goes unnoticed.
In examining the mysterious, we often look to found photography. A large part of our practice is devoted to building a library of vintage books, magazines and printed ephemera that serves as a resource for our projects. Most recently, we were inspired to create an ongoing publication that breaks from the traditional rules we usually turn to in our own practice. dead pages is a magazine that exceeds the usual format of the other books in our catalog—in physical size, in the fact that it will be continuously printed as an unlimited edition and in that it does not have any binding. Instead, each edition of dead pages is composed of loose prints folded in half and contained in a screen-printed, PVC sleeve. It is our attempt to look at and reexamine the hidden messages that exist in our library. Each issue is our (re-)interpretation of one of the many books we have found and collected.
There is an almost unlimited number of pictures available to us all, which leaves us with an unlimited amount of potential for rearranging images and as such, ever-renewing and exciting possibilities for our projects. As collaborators, we create new narratives for our books that teeter between the most distilled ideas to complex constructions of concepts. We most often provide our audience purely with visual imagery by removing or choosing to rarely add text. We hope to invite readers into our process of reexamining both the familiar and the unknown and to then make their own meanings.
We enjoy the idea that every viewer understands our work in a different way and are also open to the possibility of someone not comprehending a piece at all. We fully believe that if you are generous and genuine in what you put out in the world, there will be a response. It might not be an instant one, but it will come. It doesn’t hurt to be different, to go against the grain. On the contrary, doing so can be your greatest advantage.
"There is an almost unlimited number of pictures available to us all, which leaves us with an unlimited amount of potential for rearranging images."
