Hasta La Ideas

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.