I´ve first opened a Schuiten album (Mary it was) some time in mid-1990s, in a squattered house in East Berlin. It was a never-come-again coincidence: to discover a sort of parallel universe (yet the one with most striking ties to our own past and present), while standing in a real-life "paralell community". Both the time and the place seemed to be purpose-made for the matter; the projectile had to hit the target. It did, and since then I consider myself a Schuiten/ Peeters´ debtor. These both pictures, the "Obscuriosities Shop"(left) and the "Multitude of 20-ies" (right), as well as their predecessors of different kind, are, in a way, re-paying the debt.
By the way, how many hidden 20-ies would you find in the "Multitude"? Let me know!
Dmitry (Mitya) Sukhin, St.Petersburg - Berlin, December 2002
