Onomatopee is an art project space located in Eindhoven, The Netherlands. Each project they take on includes an exhibition and a publication, many of which are at Printed Matter.

In their newly published “Chartres: One Hour of Sound in a Gothic Cathedral” artist Toine Horvers describes 1 hour of the incidental noise which he recorded while standing in the cathedral. Translating the sounds into words and sentences without referencing that he is inside Chartres (there was no religious activity was taking place at the time), he looks for ways to strip his language of the styles and tools often employed. Each page represents one minute of listening and the result is an in-depth, poetic description that gives life to a vibrant and nearly-imperceivable world.

Another book, from 2013, ‘An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth : Thomas Raat’ looks at the colorful geometric forms of Raat’s abstract paintings, inspired by the cover designs of popular “egghead” novels published from the 1940s to the 1970s. The elegant artist’s book is a work of art in itself, with rich full-color plates, Chinese folding and varying folio sizes. The artist’s repurposing of the imagery of the paperback jackets mediates the outlandish range of synthetic emotions from the titles they were meant to convey (such as “the law of civilization and decay”).