ABOUT

Most of what happens in a studio never makes it onto paper. A painting changes direction halfway through. A gesture returns, year after year, from one work to the next. A method is abandoned, then taken up again much later. These are the things that give a work its shape, and yet they are rarely recorded clearly. Often even the artist can't fully explain them. When the work leaves the studio, much of this knowledge stays behind.

We are interested in these gaps, and in the whole path by which something comes to be art: where an initiative begins, what carries it forward, what changes along the way, the moment when what is in front of you starts to matter. We know a good deal about finished works. We know far less about the mechanism that produces them.

IMAGE RESEARCH was born from the wish to understand it better. We start from the visual arts, because that is where our own questions come from, and we try to follow, and document, the course of creation.

We don't believe this can be done from a single place. The world is more connected than ever, and we want to make use of that: to meet artists and professionals, near and far, and to see what brings them together and what sets them apart.

Artists know things about their own work that no one else can tell, and we want to listen to them. But some questions only become clear when they are seen from elsewhere too: by a researcher, a historian, a curator, or someone who works directly with the image, with its materials or with the technologies that produce it. That is why we seek collaborations with people from different fields, on which our future research can build.

What we learn will, in time, become exhibitions, publications, archives and conversations. All of it will remain open, for anyone who wants to carry it further.