Peter De Potter - The Vanity of Certain Flowers (with signed print) - Visual Art Services 2016

Even if you don't know his name, you know Peter De Potter's work - whether it's the now-legendary pieces he worked on over a ten-year collaboration with fellow Belgian Raf Simons, his exploration of youth online expressed by screengrabs ripped from social media and hosted only on Tumblr, or the cover for Kanye West's The Life of Pablo. The Vanity of Certain Flowers is a self-published 272-page monograph of entirely new work, containing photography, photomontages, and graphics. Described as "a mental landscape broken down into hundreds of images," it both explores visually familiar territory for De Potter (the male body, sportswear, crucifixes) and gestures to something new, focussing on the concept of "retreat". But rather than escapism or admitting defeat, his call for retreat is one for "self education rather than self gratification", a move away from a culture that's increasingly obsessed with status and ambition towards the idea of an almost spiritual search for truth inside yourself.

272p - 18x13cm - softcover + signed photoprint - perfect condition