Thomas Mailaender

très heureux d avoir invité @alixlacloche avec @marionmailaender dans le cadre de @residence.vue.mer @tuba.club passez nous voir!!! — Mercredi 13 mai — 18h à 21h Hôtel Paradis, 97-99 rue Paradis, 13006 Marseille Jeudi 14 mai — 12h à 20h Tuba Club, 2 bd Alexandre Delabre, 13008 Marseille

Die Bargeldinitiative bewirkt nichts, geniesst in der Bevölkerung aber grosse Sympathien. Was kaum jemand weiss: Sie legitimiert Kreise am äussersten rechten Rand, die seit Jahren wildeste Verschwörungs­erzählungen verbreiten. «Die dubiosen Freunde des Bar­gelds» – jetzt auf republik.ch Von Dennis Bühler @dennisbueh (Text) und Thomas Mailaender @thomasmailaender (Bild)

A point of view, Thomas Mailaender & Tommy Lee Jones, 2014. Mixed techniques on oysters. Thomas Mailaender is probably the amateur’s best friend. Photographer, visual artist, video maker and collector, the man has more than one sausage to his string, which might have inspired his maxim L’Union Fait la Farce (The Union is a Farce, the title of one of his exhibitions and publications). He is particularly drawn to images made by others and relentlessly trawls the Internet and flea markets for any he can get his hands on, his eyes flashing on any bold visual display that he unearths like others do ore. While he possesses an inimitable way of reclaiming these raw materials, he never forgets their source, as demonstrated in this series of oysters. He handed over images to a certain Tommy Lee Jones, who creates customized seashells sold on the online bazaar Etsy, and made this four-handed work, a collaboration confusing issues, codes and value systems. The art of mixing used to concoct a more entertaining dish or his vision of the filling. @thomasmailaender Published in Profane 1 #profane #profane1 #issue1 #apointofview #thomasmailaender

CAPTIVE SUN 
Extract from the « Sunset Books » collection of @thomasmailaender 
With a text by Guillaume Blanc- Marianne @maculabulligen In Acid Magazine no7. 

« Each evening, across the globe, tens of thousands of watchers take turns from one longitude to another, photographing the same sun. A vast, unending pursuit unfolds, carried out by a crowd armed with cameras, sometimes referred to by English speakers as “point-and-shoots”. For man is, above all, a hunter, driven by the impulse to claim and possess. This is the logic underpinning Thomas Mailaender’s proposal for a library composed of books each illustrated with a sunset; a tribute to shared culture, if not to the most basic anthropological constant. »

Focus on 𝖳𝖧𝖮𝖬𝖠𝖲 𝖬𝖠𝖨𝖫𝖠𝖤𝖭𝖣𝖤𝖱 𝘏𝘰𝘵 𝘋𝘰𝘨, 2015 Lambda print on aluminium and oak wood frame (Standard Hotel commission, NYC) 65 x 45 cm Edition of 25 · Part of the group show « THE DOG IN ME » Vernissage 🗓️Jeudi 13 Février 2025 · 18h - 21h 📍 37 rue Chapon · Paris 3e · Thomas Mailaender est né à Marseille en 1979. Il a étudié aux Arts Décoratifs de Paris puis à la Villa Arson de Nice. Il vit et travaille entre Marseille et Paris. Connu pour son utilisation d’un large éventail de techniques, il emploie divers matériaux, se réappropriant des images provenant d’Internet ou issues de ses propres archives. Collectionneur obsessionnel et passionné par les installations immersives, Thomas Mailaender met son ingéniosité au service de sa capacité à concevoir des expositions créatives toujours teintées d’humour et d’originalité. Le travail de Thomas Mailaender a été exposé dans de nombreuses institutions françaises et internationales et présenté au sein d’expositions collectives telles que Do Disturb (Palais de Tokyo, Paris, 2017), Iconoclasts: Art Out of the Mainstream (Saatchi Gallery, Londres, 2017-2018), Performing for the Camera (Tate Modern, 2016), From Here On (Rencontres d’Arles, 2011), Back to the Future show (FOAM, Amsterdam, 2018), Don’t! Photography and Art of Mistakes (SFMOMA, 2019) ou encore lors d’une installation déambulatoire de The Fun Archeology (MUCEM, 2021). Sa première rétrospective européenne, The Fun Archive, est organisée au NRW Forum de Düsseldorf en 2017, deux autres expositions personnelles suivront, Ultraviolets à la Chambre, Strasbourg en 2022 puis, Lumière Passion au Centre Photographique Marseille en 2022. En 2024, la MEP invite l’artiste à investir ses espaces pour une Carte Blanche qui pousse le champ des expérimentations photographiques, lui consacrant ainsi sa première grande rétrospective à Paris. Les œuvres de Thomas Mailaender sont conservées dans des institutions du monde entier, notamment au Musée National de l’Histoire de l’Immigration à Paris, au Fonds national d’art contemporain à Paris, au Musée régional d’art contemporain Occitanie / Pyrénées-Méditerranée, Sérignan ou encore au MONA, en Tasmanie.

[BOOK SIGNING] 🖊️ LES BELLES IMAGES @thomasmailaender @parisphotofair Thursday November, 7 18:00 Booth L10

NEW ! LES BELLES IMAGES @thomasmailaender . Special edition coming with the book “Les Belles Images” including a framed photograph taken from the artist’s collection. 100 unique pieces. (Link in bio) • Glazed ceramic frame realised by the artist Variable size 100 unique pieces • Book signing at Paris Phot @parisphotofair Booth L10 Thursday, 7 - 6pm • Produced especially for the Artist’s solo exhibition at the Maison Européenne de la Photographie, this series brings together over one hundred vintage original photographs found by the artist at flea markets and through online marketplaces. The images came from press agencies that received prints on a daily basis, and were used for reproduction, with typed captions on their reverse sides describing the event or action photographed in a few sentences. These “semi-precious” images are set in unique frames manufactured and enamelled by Mailaender and his assistants. In constant correlation with the image depicted, the frames deliberately include fingerprints, a nod to the amateur practices valued by the artist. “Les Belles Images” celebrates the voyeuristic, offbeat iconography of the images included, which had a special status in the press at the time. Known colloquially in French as the rubrique des chiens écrasés (“crushed dog section”), the series refers to the human interest stories often tinged with irony featured in the back pages of newspapers and magazines. What Mailaender calls the “little great moments in our history” – an earthworm race, a one-eyed cat, a snake casting, an invisible dog – allow the artist to visually reinvest these images by reappropriating them and giving them new narratives. Extracted from their original distribution networks, the images acquire a particular resonance, taking the form of a kind of archaeology of photography, but their place on the museum walls also celebrates the visual plurality of press photography in the second half of the twentieth century. • Text by @aden_vncd With the support from @mep.paris @simonalamep 🙏

Last month to discover my solo show “les Belles Images” @mep.paris curated by Simon Baker @simonalamep assisted by Aden Vincendeau @aden_vncd ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️ photos: Quentin Chevrier.

Decalcomania is a tunnel of nostalgia. It is a dive into the ‘70s, ‘80s and ‘90s, a booming era for the represented brands, and for stickers as a form of communication. It is a hymn to amateurism and photomania, to pop and to vernacular: we are in a tunnel greenhouse – an example of poor and popular architecture – surrounded by stickers, the emblem of image-decoration, reproducible and accessible to all. It is a hymn to collecting, not only as a subject, but also as an artistic practice: for @thomasmailaender , fetching material on the Internet – images, as well as old objects – “is like looking for mushrooms in a forest,” somewhere between sport and methodology. In the end, infinite mental images exist within each sticker, generated by the viewer’s personal memories or imagination. -IT- Decalcomania è un tunnel di nostalgia. Un tuffo negli anni ‘70, ‘80 e ‘90, momento di picco dei brand rappresentati e dell’adesivo come forma di comunicazione. È un inno all’amatorialità e alla fotomania, al pop e al vernacolare: siamo in una serra tunnel, esempio di architettura povera e popolare, circondati di stickers, emblema dell’immagine-decorazione, riproducibile e accessibile a tutti. È un inno al collezionismo, non solo come soggetto, ma anche come pratica artistica: per Thomas Mailaender, cercare materiale su internet – immagini, così come vecchi oggetti – “è come cercare funghi in una foresta”, a metà tra sport e metodologia. Alla fine, ogni adesivo ha in sé infinite immagini mentali: a generarle sono i ricordi personali, o l’immaginazione di chi guarda. More info on the exhibition program at phmuseumdays.com PhMuseum Days 2024 International Photography Festival 12.09 - 15.09 | Bologna, Italy #phmuseum #phmuseumdays #photofestival #exhibition #bologna #stickers

A few snapshots from our visit to @thomasmailaender ‘s studio in Marseille to see the creative process behind our capsule. 1- Facsimile: « Lumière, ask me why in grey », 2024 2- “UP-7” polyurethane sculpture by Gaetano Pesce 3- Thomas Mailaender’s studio 4- Cyanotype test on a worksuit found in Thomas’s studio 5- Cyanotype development in sunny Marseille 6- WIP about the “Les Belles Images” exhibition, MEP, Paris 7- UV light 8- Rinsing, rinsing, rinsing! 9- Drying 10- First test piece 💙 The limited-edition capsule is on sale at @mep.paris until September 29, alongside the “Les Belles Images” exhibition, @thomasmailaender ‘s first major retrospective in Paris. #ÉtudesStudio #mepparis

Opening tomorrow of the ‘Novum Glossarium’ solo show @centrephotolectoure for Été Photographique Festival in the beautiful village of Lectoure and invited by the greatest @lydie_marchi ❤️ NOVUM GLOSSARIUM The technique of chromolithography on ceramics was invented in 1870 in England by Simon François Ravenet, a French engraver working for a porcelain factory in Chelsea. He developed a transfer paper, called a decal. Simon François Ravenet imagined printing on a special paper using copperplate engraving, which allowed him to transfer his design onto porcelain pieces. This technique is still used today, it is called a « third fire » technique because the ceramic pieces have already been fired twice before the application of the chromolithographs, which then need to go through a firing stage to become permanent. This technique is used here by Thomas Mailaender in a new, slightly provocative approach to the photographic medium. By revisiting the aesthetics of traditional archaeology museums, the installation Novum Glossarium offers a different experience of photography. The ancient pottery, used domestically and displayed on the central pedestal, is diverted from its original use as containers. They become supports and reflections of the encyclopedic nature of the image collections from the 20th and 21st centuries collected by Thomas Mailaender over the past twenty years on the internet, where, ultimately, every object presented is for sale. Indeed, whatever object one searches for on any search engine eventually ends up in an image bank with a white background. For sale. These objects on white backgrounds are applied via the chromolithography technique onto the pottery and shards presented, like precious archaeological relics. Critique of the image world in which contemporary society evolves, but also an archaeological museum of the future, Novum Glossarium resonates as a contemporary archive eternally monumentalized by the firing of present and past times of a civilization that seems doomed to disappear.

« Terra Nostra » – les expositions « Novum Glossarium » à la halle aux grains @thomasmailaender Thomas Mailaender transforme la halle aux grains en musée d’archéologie. Plusieurs centaines de poteries de grès - jarres, amphores, bouteilles, pots, assiettes, etc. - se trouvent parées de chromos, technique photographique datant de 1870 utilisée dans les arts décoratifs. Détournés de leurs usages premiers, ces objets sont supports et reflets du caractère encyclopédique que revêt les collections d’images du 20èm et 21ème siècle collectées par Thomas Mailaender depuis une vingtaine d’années sur internet où tout est à vendre. Quel que soit l’objet que l’on cherche sur un moteur de recherches, ce dernier se retrouvent à un moment dans une banque d’images sur fond blanc. En vente. Musée archéologique du futur, cette installation résonne comme une archive contemporaine éternellement durable monumentalisée par la cuisson des temps présents et passés d’une civilisation qui semble vouée à disparaître. « L’été photographique de Lectoure » 20 juillet – 01 septembre 📷 Thomas Mailaender, « prototype » 2024 © Thomas Mailaender @centrephotolectoure #lectoure #etephotolectoure #letephotographiquedelectoure @lydie_marchi @villedelectoure @intogascognelomagne @gersledepartement @laregionoccitanie @tourismegers @reseaudiagonal @air_de_midi @dca_reseau @reseau_lux  #thomasmailaender