Paperback: 298 pages
Publisher: WORK
Language: English
Product Dimensions: 30 × 22 cm
Release Date: 2004
Price: sold
Design: Theseus Chan
Issue No.12 of the Singapore-based visual magazine WERK was created in collaboration with the COMME des GARÇONS Guerrilla Store, continuing from the previous issue. The cover and page edges are treated with fluorescent pink spray paint applied through stencils, giving each copy a distinctly handmade quality, while the edges are further altered with an irregular jagged treatment.
The stencil-sprayed artwork seems to embody the idea of the Guerrilla Store itself. Just as the stores overlaid a new identity onto existing spaces without completely erasing what was already there, the fluorescent spray intervenes directly on the existing surface of the magazine. Rather than simply documenting the Guerrilla Store, WERK No.12 translates its spirit into the physical object of the publication itself.
It is one of the most iconic issues in the history of WERK Magazine, and also one of the rarest to find.
COMME des GARÇONS’ Guerrilla Store was an experimental retail project developed by Rei Kawakubo and Adrian Joffe between 2004 and 2009, and is now regarded as an important precursor to the modern pop-up store.
Rather than creating polished new interiors in established luxury districts, Guerrilla Stores temporarily occupied existing spaces such as former bookshops, butcher shops, pharmacies, and warehouses, with minimal alteration. With little conventional advertising and a lifespan of no more than one year, discovering the store itself became part of the experience.
Beginning in Berlin, the project expanded to cities including Helsinki, Athens, Los Angeles, Ljubljana, Singapore, Warsaw, Reykjavik, and Beirut.