Ill-Studio designed exclusive merchandise such as sweatshirts, t-shirts and accessories for Soulwax’s “Transient Program and Machinery“ tour between 2016 and 2018.
Twisted Objects is an ode to popular culture in which obsolete generic ephemera are warped and distorted, reflecting an obsessive perception of mundane objects. Shot without CJI effects, Twisted Objects was exhibited in several cities such as Paris, Berlin, Madrid and Vienna. A special shortened edit was released in 2014 in collaboration with Nowness.
«Ill-Studio? I first considered them as “contemporary aesthetes”. This could look like an oxymoron, a contradiction : the aesthete, in its old and dandy-est sense, is all about disdain for democratic productions, industrial civilization artifacts and popular surfaces, and for this crowd he snubs with his aristocratic taste.
You can find this in Ill-Studio’s work since 2007: whatever they’re asked to work on, they showcase the evidence of a cult of beauty, managing to combine minimalism with that kind of preciousness that may lead to esotericism.
The style is their style, before displaying any technical know-how or graphico-conceptual protocol. Except that this true “hyperesthesia disease” (illness?) does not only apply to quality items, but to some indifferently high or low forms of contemporary culture. This is the artistic direction that will be showcased during their exhibition Fetishistic Scopophilia : highlighting visual obsessions, to exhibit references, to taste raw materials.»
Text by Jean-Max Colard
Audible Visions. A Spaced Out Musical Ceremony.
Published in 2009 by Ill-Studio in collaboration with DJ Alexis Le-Tan.