Louis Vuitton Travel Book

“For this project, I tried to offer a balance between the representation and the reality of what I saw, all the while moving it toward abstraction or perhaps a touch of surrealism.”

Known for his compelling ink and watercolor drawings, Marcel Dzama has nurtured an aesthetic dialogue with a range of influences such as Dadaism or the Bauhaus. For his Louis Vuitton Travel Book assignment in Morocco, Dzama consciously put himself in the position of a discoverer, taking a keen interest in everything around him. Dzama’s sketchbook was his constant companion on his trip, exploring both the day‑to‑day lives of the Morrocan people, with their customs and traditions, but also the impressive variety of landscapes, from seashores to deserts and mountain ranges. He sought to capture the movements of figures in action just as he surrendered to the power and immensity of emptiness, entirely enchanted by the effects of light and enveloping colors.

“I deliberately leave out points of reference to create an emptiness, an absence, a blank space that the viewer’s imagination will fill.”

Known in part for her fashion illustrations, American artist Kelly Beeman’s style is characterized by freedom: clean black lines, fields of color, flat perspectives, forms simplified to the extreme with only a few finely wrought details. For her Louis Vuitton Travel Book assignment in Russia, Beeman instills finesse into a Saint Petersburg full of momentum. Her recurrent protagonist, an androgynous, long‑limbed brunette, explores the historic Russian city with her diaphanous, shadowless face and engaged yet faraway gaze.

“My work is not narrative, although I wouldn’t say that the concept is entirely absent. It’s like when you’re watching someone strolling down a city street or a car whizzing by. Nothing is happening, and yet it’s the beginning of a possible story.”

Working with the effects of transparencies and building his pieces little by little, French figurative painter Marc Desgrandchamps transports his viewers to a universe outside time, lulled by the fluidity of hues. For his Louis Vuitton Travel Book assignment in Barcelona, Desgrandchamps brought a methodical and almost ethnographic approach, rendering the Catalan capital in translucent tones and populated with ephemeral beings.

A graphic designer, illustrator, designer, filmmaker, painter, sculptor and ceramist, Javier Mariscal is a Spanish artist who loves to challenge. A total artist, irreverent and, above all, “free”, the word that guides his existence. His motto: “Hay que romper con todo.” (“You have to break with everything.”).

A dyslexic child, he was obsessed by drawing from a very early age and fascinated by letters and typography, a passion that would have a substantial influence on his work. As he sees it, drawing is the cornerstone of everything. He insists that a piece of furniture, hotel, animated film, magazine cover, logo, wallpaper, poster or portrait, “all of it is ONLY a drawing”. His style is edgy, unbridled and protean, embracing the various techniques and media he encounters. The small notebook he uses to sketch a cup of coffee on the table, or the face of the person he’s talking to, never leaves his pocket.

Icinori is a studio of designers, visual artists, screen printers and publishers dealing in art books, prints, animated books and concertina books.

But first and foremost, Icinori is a truly astonishing pair, one soul with two (smart) heads, four (skilful) hands and twenty (incomparable) fingers, belonging to the French-Spanish-Japanese Mayumi Otero and French Raphaël Urwiller, two graduates from the École Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs of Strasbourg (France), which is where they met. They founded Icinori in 2007 when they were still students. Since then, as work and life partners, they have been travelling, exploring, observing, illustrating and drawing together with a breath-taking attention to detail, displaying the sort of meticulousness that typifies only the most passionate of artists.

“I’ve been hearing about Cuba since I was little. In the 1950s, our two countries developed excellent relations. Deep down, I always knew I’d go there one day.” For Li Kunwu, as a Chinese artist, Cuba resonates strongly, the island’s history mirroring that of the Middle Kingdom.

He marvels at the similarity of Cuban landscapes with the scenery in his native Yunnan and is captivated by these Cubans with their similar destiny. The passion he felt there followed him all the way to his studio, where he created over three hundred drawings, including inks, colours, lignes claires, portraits and landscapes. The diversity of styles reflects the intensity of his emotions and the profusion he encountered when he was in Cuba.