Pop-up Houseplants That Are Easy to Keep Alive

This plantabulous new collection of houseplants doesn't require your green thumb but just some love for literature and green. Let’s talk about the new coffee table pop-up book by artist and photographer Daniel Gordon and paper designer Simon Arizpe.

Houseplants Pop-Up Book

The book is a true piece of art that deserves a nice spot on your coffee table. Besides pretty pages, the paper-designed pop-up plants create a trendy and colorful plant setting. That it’s a collector's item, that’s for sure. The limited-edition book is a work of art in itself, displaying the recognizable sculptural forms of Daniel Gordon into a new layer of materiality and enliven them in a pop-up performance. The book consists of six works in pop-up form, some featuring simple plants, others unfolding more elaborate plant scenes.

A Mix of Realistic and Unnatural

Inspired by his interest in houseplants ― Gordon cuts up pictures found online to create sculptural and fantastical still lifes. He uses photography not to show reality, but to present a new version of it. The crumpled paper and mix of realistic and unnatural colors render the objects slightly goofy.

“Without seams and faults and limitations, my project would be very different,” Gordon says. “The seamlessness of the ether is boring to me, but the materialization of that ether, I think, can be very interesting.”

His pieces are a perfect marriage of digital and analog processes and of high and low artistic references, complicating what is understood as sculpture, photography, painting, and the cutout.