La Mas Bella (The Most Beautiful) is a Madrid-based project that takes the idea of a magazine to even further extremes than MK Bruce/Lee. Diego Ortiz and Pepe Murciego have produced a single issue every year since 1993 – it takes that long to produce because every issue is absolutely unique in format and content.
Each issue takes a theme that is used as a starting point to commission artists and designers to contribute and collaborate. Previous issues have taken the form of a set of instructions for life consisting of an kitchen apron stuffed with a cassette tape, a users manual and a fold-put map of ‘life’; another was a DIY tapas set featuring a waiters bill pad, an ashtray, some toothpicks and a napkin dispenser.
The latest issue is called La Mas Bella Anda (The Most Beautiful Walk), and consists of a shoebox containing a sneaker, a shoe horn, a cellophane-wrapped stone (to place in the shoe and irritate your sole) and a feather to tickle your toes. As well as these carefully sourced theme-related items, the box contains a series of specially commissioned artworks in the form of a set of prints shaped as insoles.
La Mas Bella takes the idea of editorial curation to it’s logical conclusion – each issue is a miniature gallery to be unpacked and admired.