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"Versatile artist, advertiser, creative and editor Erik Kessels will participate in the 10th edition of Festival della Fotografia Europea (European Photography Festival) with an exhibition titled Unfinished Father opening May 15. I had the opportunity to meet and interview Kessels for Vogue.it at Les Rencontres de la Photographie, Arles in 2013 - you can watch\u00A0my interview here. In his approach to art, Kessels, who is not afraid to blend the different artistic domains he works with, could be described as a modern Duchampian-inspired anthropologist who wonders \u2013 and invites us to join his quest \u2013 about the human nature and the transformation of customs and society by means of the evolution of the image culture. With Unfinished Father, Kessels addresses a much intimate and personal topic: His father, Piet Kessels, suffered a stroke in 2013 and can barely speak or move since. Prior to this, he was extremely active. His projects included restoring examples of that Italian icon: the Fiat 500 (or \u201CTopolino\u201D.) Before his stroke, he\u2019d completed four such restorations and was working on a fifth, the half-finished carapace of which was left abandoned at his home. This car came to represent his unfinished father \u2014 this is why it forms the basis of this project, which is an exhibition as well as a book, published by RVB Books. Erik transported his dad\u2019s last Topolino to Italy and presents it alongside intimately detailed images his father made to document its restoration. This work is about a man who \u2014 like his vehicle \u2014 will never be complete, but remain forever interrupted. The unfinished Topolino is the reverse of his father\u2019s situation in life: &amp;quot;he was a man who didn\u2019t like to leave things undone, who saw them to their end. We can attempt to control our circumstances, but in the final analysis they control us.&amp;quot; I met up with Erik to ask him a few questions about the project. This is the second time you touch upon a very personal matter. In 2003 you made a video with Marlene Dumas and Ryuichi Sakamoto about your sister, who passed away at an early age. Can you tell me about the process that led you to &amp;quot;Unfinished Father&amp;quot;? How did you feel?Making a personal work is often inspired by intuition. It\u2019s a big subject that combined with other big ideas floating around my head. To broach a subject like this in my work helps me deal with it. Last year, the city of Reggio Emilia asked me to develop a work with a strong connection to their city. For many years, my father restored an Italian icon \u2014 the Fiat Topolino \u2014 and this became a strong and personal starting point. Apart from the installation \u2018Unfinished Father\u2019, there will be an exhibition showing photographs of people with their Topolino taken from family albums in Reggio Emilia. What are the main differences, in terms of approach, with the other topics you have addressed in your artworks and musings? Contradictions like life and death, or humour and grief, play a big role in found photography. Often, life\u2019s pleasures go together with its more painful moments. But personal photographs always say something about the course of a life. To re-appropriate these images and share them in a new way with people looking at them helped me to deal with this story. Why do you think that in our society there is a certain shyness in being open about illness, disability? It\u2019s easier of course to look and talk about the pleasures in life. This installation is meant to be a tribute to my father\u2019s work. And an expression of things in life that will remain forever unfinished. We live as if we shall never die and, somehow, sterilize our existence by isolating the elderly and the sick into hospitals, never talking about our fears and vulnerability unless someone else starts by telling us about theirs\u2026 What do you think about this? Yes, it\u2019s strange that we wait to talk and discuss these subjects \u2014 until they become urgent. For me, it\u2019s always good to find likeminded people that have been in the same situation and can share their experiences. Talking about these matters often helps a lot."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.vogue.it/en/photography/emerging-photographers/2015/05/13/erik-kessels-unfinished-father/>