CR Blog
The order of the day
Posted by Mark Sinclair, 1 March 2013, 15:56 Permalink Comments (5)

Afterwards: better
Swiss artist Ursus Wehrli likes things just so. Books, alphabet soup, car parks, even the night sky...

Before: messy
Published today by Chronicle Books is Wehri's own document of his orderly creativity, The Art of Clean Up: Life Made Neat and Tidy, which features a wide range of his rather obsessive style of photography. It's an aesthetic that seems to have wide appeal, too – from our favourite order-obsessed Tumblr thingsorganizedneatly.tumblr.com, to Carl Kleiner's minimalist images for IKEA.




And there is nothing he won't organise – be it by colour, by shape or size, or even, in the aforementioned soup, alphabetical order (naturally). Having arranged his pieces he then photographs the results and, in the book, presents the work as a before and after shot in each case.


The Art of Clean Up out now, from Chronicle (£9.99). See chroniclebooks.com for more details. Wehrli's site is kunstaufraeumen.ch and his recent TED talk is also here.
5 Comments
There comes a point where familiarity leads to contempt…
… and in terms of 'value ordered objects', I'm nearing the latter.
2013-03-01 17:50:54
this guy definitely separated his smarties as a kid.
2013-03-04 11:57:02
scary.
2013-03-05 17:39:40
Brilliant!
2013-03-06 13:58:14
Captivating stuff... the desire for order
2013-03-09 01:35:28
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