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Martin Fengel
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I love travelling with Martin. He is funny, he is calm, he is out there in the world because he wants to see. It is out of curiosity that he gets out of bed in the morning, it is out of curiosity that he takes pictures. He is a great stylist, too, he has an eye for colour, he has a humour in his work that is dark and light at the same time.
When he drinks, he gets even funnier. Then he gets tired.
He is a great friend and a true artist. But above all, he is a great traveller. We went to visit William Eggleston together in Memphis, Tennessee. The Master of the Ordinary, the Surrealist of Everyday, this idol of ours fell with his face into a plate of Chinese food and was not particularily disturbed, he took it with stride. Just whiped the shrimps away and asked to be driven to a gas station to get some  Gatorade to go along with his Vodka.
Martin and I went to visit Richard Prince in the Catskill Mountains and Prince drove with us to this house which was an artwork of his and would burn down a few years after. The house hadits  skin ripped off, so to speak, the isolation was like a silver mirror of the surrounding forest – later that day he took us to this very remote restaurant, like Twin Peaks. The waitress was a white trash queen which Richard Prince had photographed for Purple magazine. A few years later we met him in Venice somewhere in Dorsoduro, he had the Uomo Vogue with him which featured his portrait on the cover and was his most polite.
But my favourite and truly Martin-like journey was to this dinosaur land somewhere in Arkansas. They said it was the biggest in the world. We drove for eight hours and almost bought a Devo tape on the way, but then opted for more country music––when we got there, it was sad and beautiful, it was a man*s dream, that*s for sure, these giant statures in a decaying plastic. The colour like a post-apocalyptic memory of a pop culture that had given up its reign on the world just as the dinosaurs had lost their battle. We felt blessed. Failed dreams are the stuff that grace is made off.

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Martin Fengel