Artist Thomas Jeppe interviews Leonard Koren about changing cultural contexts. Focussing on the shifting cultural frameworks—from LA's celebrities and subcultures to Japan’s tea traditions, fashion and entrepreneurship—in which Leonard Koren developed his work, Thomas Jeppe takes a closer look at the artist’s personal and artistic trajectory, addressing the coherent threads running through this diverse practice.

Biography

Thomas Jeppe, (1984, works in Paris) works across exhibitions, curating and publishing, Jeppe is occupied by questions around coding, exchange, and vernacular aspects of cultural production. His first book Home Made Tattoos Rule (2006) catalysed a movement within tattoo subculture. After working as a magazine editor, he published a series of interview-based publications, including Asiatische Adlernase, with a gallerist who left art for the world of Taiwanese tea; Don Carlos, with Mexico's biggest seashell collector; and Theory of the Bench, an anonymous roundtable discussion about social dynamics and appropriation in civil space. Jeppe's Abstract Journalism manifesto, released in 2014, proposes a framework for making sense of research material in an artistic context. He produces the Mimetic Club Bulletin to accompany each of his exhibition projects, and is a regular contributor to 032c magazine. He has shown in galleries and institutions in Australia, Mexico, Germany, France, Iran, and Czech Republic, and he recently organised the Umwelt exhibitions in Basel, Hamburg and Paris.