In the early 1960s, Mel Ramos (born 1935), one of the first artists to embrace Pop art, abandoned Abstract Expressionism and began to produce the work for which he is best known: glossy, flat paintings of idealized, voluptuous female nudes emerging from banana peels, lounging on top of cigars or caressing bottles of ketchup. Taking advertising's enduring maxim sex sells to its most extreme ends, Ramos poses the nude female figure in erotic, occasionally even vulgar, positions on top of the most banal consumer goods. Beauty queens, martini glasses, nude Hollywood starlets and hamburgers are given equal attention in Ramos' artistic universe; if Ramos has been criticized for commodifying the female form it must also be acknowledged that he eroticizes the commodity. Mel Ramos: Superman at the Supermarket is a homage to Ramos, published in celebration of his 80th birthday.
Created by Swedish photo-artist Stefan Bladh (b. 1976), Hidden Kingdom is a fictional journey through an inner and outer landscape of situations and encounters.
The series investigates a state of mind - the impermanence of everything and the human longing for something bigger to appear.
'The series consists of pictures from travels around European landscapes between 2006 - 2016. On these journeys I often found myself in moments neither in the beginning of something nor in the end. Not even giving me an insight. Rather I found myself in the middle of something. And that was always the most important.' - Stefan Bladh This beautiful large-format publication invites us on this impressive journey and the individual artistic cosmos of the artist.
Bladhs' practice shifts between documentary and conceptual projects. The questions usually revolve around the human condition, exploring themes of memories, time, life and the impermanence of our existence.
His work has been included in major photography festivals such as, Rencontres d'Arles (France) and Lodz Photofestival (Poland), and he has exhibited widely in Europe.
