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An artist's book that turns Baudelaire's Invitation to the Voyage into a passport.

Each page pairs one line of the poem with one painting, found through open-source research across periods, styles and traditions. Machine-readable passport codes run under every image and record the journey like stamps.

Mirrors are set into the book. They make the reader handle it, and they put the reader's own face into the voyage, the way the poem longs for a place that may only exist in the mind.

Credits

  • Design – Athanasios Katsougiannis

Le Passport - L’invitation au Voyage

  • Mirrored passport-style machine-readable code listing artworks, titles and dimensions down the page The code lists every artwork, title and size.
  • Leafing through, mirrors included.
  • Passport page with a geometric ochre and black op-art poster study above a mirrored code line
  • Page pairing a loose dancer-like brushwork in red, green, blue and yellow with mirrored passport code
  • Page reproducing a worn Japanese woodblock-printed book cover with crests and red seals
  • Le Passport page with a blue and lime abstract print on orange, captioned in mirrored code
  • Abstract painting of dripping magenta and green forms on orange paired with a coded caption line
  • Page showing a soft green and blue colour-field painting above mirrored machine-readable text
  • Page with a bold abstract in red, yellow, blue and green crossing shapes and a coded caption
  • Page with a lithograph of blue and green brushed forms and the French line "Déchirant ses baisers et ses peurs" One line of the poem, one painting.
  • Passport page with a red, green and ochre geometric piece joined by a web of black strings
  • Earthy textured abstract landscape painting set at the top of a page with mirrored code below
  • Le Passport page with a pastel abstract landscape of pink, blue, green and orange planes
  • Page with an energetic gestural abstract in red, grey and orange above a mirrored caption
  • Striped textile pattern studies titled HYAZINTHE paired with a passport-style code line
  • Page with a textured gold circle on a red square canvas, captioned in mirrored machine code
  • Expressive seaside painting in blues and white with streaks of pink and yellow, with coded caption