OUBEYs MINDKISS

Now the OUBEY book is part of the Sagmeister exhibition in the “Musée Arts Décoratifs” in Paris, where it reaches a larger public outside the Internet for the first time. The fact that this became possible is part of a long and wonderful story, for which we may even have a MINDKISS from OUBEY to thank in the end.

“I only take on projects that I personally find convincing,” said Stefan Sagmeister, when I asked him in November 2005 whether he might be willing to take over the design of the first book about an artist named OUBEY, who died young and was unknown until then. Sagmeister wanted to see pictures from the artist’s work first, in order to be able to decide.

So in June 2006 I came again and showed him a selection of 150 pictures from OUBEYs extensive and diverse oeuvre in his studio in New York, and spoke with him at length about the idea for my project. He said “Yes” and spontaneously proposed the concept of “five volumes in a slipcase”. That was the best proposal I could imagine. From the first moment on, I could sense a spirit of congeniality there. The question came up at some point about what to call the book, and I suggested the title MINDKISS – that was what OUBEY called his first and only exhibition in 1992. He had invented the word himself. Sagmeister’s response to this suggestion was short and clear: “MINDKISS – that’s it.”

Two years later, when I saw the prototype for the spectacular 3D slipcase for the first time, I gazed at it with amazement over and over, because I had never seen anything like it before in my life. That is an aspect of what I call congenial: this slipcase is just as wild, multifaceted and idiosyncratic as OUBEY was, and the design of the five volumes is just as diverse, colorful and yet consistent as his large oeuvre.