'Please Look in the Basement' is a quirky collection of posters of lost cats, dogs, birds and other pets, carefully curated from the collection of Maarten Inghels, Jan Lemaire, Jean-Michel Meyers, Denis Meyers and Nicolas Marichal from Antwerp, Brussels and Ghent. Fellow collector and writer Maarten Inghels took the posters as the starting point for conversations with the owners. Apart from the posters, this maverick collectible bundles whimsical anecdotes about loneliness and friendship in the big city. How do you find an escaped animal? Does a cat survive a fall from the fourth floor? And did the fortune-teller really see the location of the lost dog in her crystal ball? Please Look in the Basement is an ode to the bizarre occurrences of our four-legged friends and the doltish typography of homemade posters. Inghels tells the stories of pets who one day decide to go their own way. In English, French and Dutch. AUTHOR: Maarten Inghels (°1988) is a multidisciplinary artist, poet and writer. His work consists of books, videos, actions and installations. His latest novel The Miracle of Belgium (2021) about his experiences with the biggest con man in the world, mixes documentary with fiction to explore themes such as fantasy, vanity, greed and manipulation. He coordinated The Lonely Funeral in Belgium, a social and literary project which provides poets to speak at funerals of those without relatives and friends to attend. An eponymous anthology was published in Dutch (De Bezige Bij), German (Edition Korrespondenzen) and English (Arc Publications). Maarten Inghels's work explores the friction between the public and the private and the art of disappearing. SELLING POINTS: . A simple but effective concept: gathering posters from the streets over the years and telling the story of these lost animals . 218 posters of DIY, old-school, homemade posters, some of which were made on old computers and some even hand-drawn . Posters gathered from Ghent, Brussels and Antwerp 225 colour illustrations
