Graphic Detour: Crossing Borders in European Design
Graphic Design Museum Breda, NL, June 11 – November 27, 2011
Direktorenhaus, Berlin, DE, December 16, 2011 – February 3, 2012
Curator: Erik Kessels (KesselsKramer)
Statement: «Graphic Design isn’t what it used to be. Whereas traditional graphic design was a clearly defined craft, now technology allows anyone to be a designer. Computer programs help us create almost anything imaginable, which means that a lack of crafts skills is no longer the issue: a lack of ideas is. Consequently, true graphic design today is less about getting your fingers inky, and more about thinking different. As doing becomes easier and easier, finding original approaches is harder than ever.
But help is at hand. The boundaries between disciplines like fashion, art, photography, architecture and advertising are also becoming increasingly porous. Because these disciplines are no longer clear cut, cross-fertilisation can occur. Artists now take regular detours into graphic design, and graphic designers touch upon art more frequently than ever.
This exhibition celebrates the diversity of an ever-shifting area of creative expression. Graphic Detour showcases the work of designers who go beyond design, talents who mix media as a matter of course, innovators whose ideas set them apart. And to push this new graphic design further, Graphic Detour has asked a series of companies to ‘blind date’ a creative thinker, matching artists with ceramic workshops, printers, woodworkers and even candy manufacturers.
The result is a series of detours that just might lead us to a new place entirely.»
Participants: Daniel Eatock – KEMO Models and Prototypes; Joachim Schmid – NPN Printers; Erik Steinbrecher – Sunday Morning/European Ceramic Workcentre; Tod Hanson – Vlisco; Koen Taselaar – Metaalplan; Marti Guixé – Kompak; FUEL – De Geus Woodworks; Damien Poulain – Jamin
