Ex-Plain, Author at Ex-Plain

16 min read 0

Ancient Roman Brutalism? This Tomb Defies Classical Expectations

Two thousand years before concrete brutalism, this ancient Roman tomb built to honor a former slave appears staggeringly modern, but…

5 min read 0

In which we rediscover the overlooked trend of ASCII art hidden inside fan-made video game guides from decades ago, created…

13 min read 0

A stolen white Porsche 911 in 1970s Yugoslavia turned an ordinary car thief into an urban legend. For several nights,…

11 min read 0

New York–based artist Clement Valla has been steadily collecting images of the Earth, but not the Earth as we know…

6 min read 0

We're doing a new regular feature where we collect all of the strange and wonderful things we find thanks to…

9 min read 0

To the left of the main entrance of St. Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City stands a controversial bronze door that…

4 min read 2

Between 1979 and 1989, photographer Christopher John Ball documented the people of Blackburn, the Lancashire industrial town that shaped his…

7 min read 0

In the postwar era, pharmaceutical print advertising, especially for psychiatric drugs, was blunt, graphic, and often disturbing, using fear and…

8 min read 0

Moving to West Berlin, David Bowie and Iggy Pop found unexpected inspiration in German Expressionism, most notably in the form…

8 min read 0

The version of romanticism truly unique to the 21st century experience may have already come from a lesser-known Swedish artist…