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An Art Service

Wednesday, May 11, 2011


OMMU, Athens, GR
May 20 – June 11, 2011

Statement: «Both a graphics firm as well as an indie publisher, An Art Service acts as an extension of the artist’s studio—a place where artist’s materials are bound together with their context.
OMMU presents a collection of publications, posters and stuff produced by An Art Service. Included are gritty hand towels of Paul Lee laid onto blue, pink and purple pastels, cultural debris and other refuse assembled by Nate Lowman, graphic charcoal drawings by Lee Lozano’s bound in a bright red orange fabric, a wistful tracing of Dan Colen ambling through New York, a portfolio of Christopher Wool’s paintings inspired by nocturnal banalities—each defining a unique art practice that is a part of the city. This installation is all to show the various materials that inspire the designs—the text of an Ed Ruscha painting informs An Art Service’s styles as much as the color and texture of a banana peel.
An Art Service—founded by Brendan Dugan in NY—began its collaborations with artists and artist estates in 2007 to provide a service to contextualize their practice.»

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RISD MFA Graphic Design exhibition 2011

Tuesday, May 10, 2011

Rhode Island School of Design MFA Graphic Design exhibition 2011
RI Convention Center, Providence
May 10 – June 4, 2011

Statement: «The 2011 RISD Graphic Design MFA Thesis Show is a group exhibition of selected thesis work from the RISD Graphic Design MFA Class of 2011. The show is published in a catalogue which will be displayed and distributed at the annual RISD Graduate Exhibition. The show is the catalogue, which is also the show.

This is the collective effort of 15 designers, the result of five months of research, conception, and production.
The Graphic Design Thesis Show is a group exhibition presented as part of the Rhode Island School of Design’s annual Graduate Thesis Exhibition. The Graduate Exhibition shows the work of Masters’ candidates from 16 disciplines in a temporary gallery space installed in the exhibition halls of the Rhode Island Convention Center.
Our work exists in three challenging contexts: in the space of the gallery; in the expanse of the convention center; and in relation to each other’s work and the work of other designers and artists. How do we show graphic design in the gallery setting, and how can we make a coherent show from the work of 15 designers?
Beginning in January, we met regularly as a class to develop the concept and content of the show. We pondered how our show could support the graduate exhibition by creating spaces for observation and dialogue. We experimented with ways to make the show interactive and distributive. We developed strategies to tackle the extreme scale of the convention hall. Throughout, we discussed how to exhibit our very different bodies of work as a single, collective gesture.

Fluid working groups developed ideas which were fully explored through research into precedents, physical models, digital renderings, materials research, and budget analysis. A studio led by critic Rob Giampietro offered a forum to critique concepts and discuss strategies around the exhibition of graphic design.

During the course of the studio, we talked with Jon Sueda (CCA/Wattis) and James Langdon (East Side Projects), two designers who have recently curated shows of graphic design in a fresh and critical manner. We drew inspiration from the course reading Support Structures, an investigation of platforms of interaction between art, design, institutions, and space. We were particularly drawn to Antoni Muntadas’s Exhibition which strips the display conventions of the gallery of content, reframing the gallery space and exposing it as a system of display.

The show draws further inspiration from other designers engaged in the critical exhibition of graphic design, including Peter Bil’ak’s Graphic Design in the White Cube (2006) and Julia Born’s Title of the Show (2009) as well as the cover of XTC’s Go 2 album by Hipgnosis (1978). In their work, these designers expose the systems of the conceptualization, production, exhibition, and distribution of graphic design.

This is the catalogue of the show, which is also the show. It is a collection of work from our individual thesis investigations; an index of the physical gallery space; and a record of our collaborative process. The show is a unified work that extends beyond the exhibition space and hinges on its distribution. The work is not complete until it enters circulation.

The 2011 RISD Graphic Design MFA Thesis Show exists on the walls of the gallery, in frames and on screen, on pedestals and under glass. It is in your hands and on the internet. Graphic design lives in all of these spaces, and it thrives in its distribution and circulation.

—RISD Graphic Design MFA Class of 2011»

The catalogue/show is available for download.

Filed in Art and Design, Collective exhibitions, Contemporary, Critical Design, Curating, Exhibition, Exhibition Making, Galleries, Installation, Publication, Schools, USA | | Comments Off on RISD MFA Graphic Design exhibition 2011

Learn to Read Art: A History of Printed Matter

Thursday, April 7, 2011

Learn to Read Art: A History of Printed Matter
Philip Feldman Gallery + Project Space at Pacific Northwest College of Art, Portland, Oregon
April 7 – June 17, 2011

Statement: «Printed Matter is pleased to announce the opening of Learn to Read Art: A History of Printed Matter, an off-site exhibition at the Pacific Northwest College of Art in Portland, Oregon. The exhibit presents a survey of the publishing output of Printed Matter, Inc. over the last 35 years. Curated by Max Schumann, Associate Director, and AA Bronson, the show will be open to the public at the Philip Feldman Gallery April 7 – June 17, 2011.

Learn to Read Art brings together hundreds of publications, editions, and ephemera tracing the history of Printed Matter as an alternative space established in response to the growing phenomenon of contemporary artists’ book production. In the context of widespread experimentation in the 1960s and 70s—a general challenging of traditional art forms and media—many artists looked to the book both as a formal device rich in possibilities, as well as for its social and political potency.

This exhibition assembles a broad sampling of Printed Matter’s artists’ books and special editions, as well as various ephemera produced over the years in support of its programs—print catalogs, posters, flyers, postcards—to convey how Printed Matter exists as much more than just a bookstore.
The main legacy of Printed Matter is the tens of thousands of artists’ books and publications that have been circulating around the world over the past four decades. Learn to Read Art offers a distillation of a broad and diverse community and body of work, ultimately committed to experimental and accessible artistic practices.

Artists represented in Learn to Read Art include: Kathy Acker, Lisa Anne Auerbach, Tauba Auerbach, Alice Aycock, John Baldessari, Matthew Barney, Barbara Bloom, Paul Chan, Larry Clark, Francesco Clemente, Chuck Close, Anne Collier, Critical Art Ensemble, Destroy All Monsters, Eric Fischl, Guerrilla Girls, Guerrilla Art Action Group [GAAG], Jon Gibson, Liam Gillick, Robert Gober, Mark Gonzales, Felix Gonzales-Torres, Rodney Graham, Brion Gysin, Rachel Harrison, Mona Hatoum, Matthew Higgs, Nancy Holt, Jenny Holzer, Douglas Huebler, Chris Johanson, Martin Kippenberger, Terence Koh, Barbara Kruger, Tuli Kupferberg, Louise Lawler, Christian Marclay, Ari Marcopoulos, Josephine Meckseper, Aleksandra Mir, Jonathan Monk, Vik Muniz, Yoko Ono, Jack Pierson, Richard Prince, Faith Ringgold, Martha Rosler, Ed Ruscha, Fred Sandback, Cindy Sherman, David Shrigely, Josh Smith, Kiki Smith, Temporary Services, Sonic Youth, Nancy Spero, Richard Tuttle, Lawrence Weiner, Christopher Wool and many more.

Previous iterations of the exhibition have been held at PS1 in New York, Museo de Arte Cotemporáneo de Castilla in León, Spain, Badischer Kunstverein in Karlsruhe, Germany and Artspeak in Vancouver.»

Filed in Art and Design, Bookshop, Curating, Exhibit design, Exhibition, Exhibition Making, Installation, Magazines, Publishing, Retrospective, Thematic, USA | | Comments Off on Learn to Read Art: A History of Printed Matter

Deadly and Brutal: Film Posters from Ghana
Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich

Friday, April 1, 2011

Deadly and Brutal: Film Posters from Ghana
Pinakothek der Moderne, Die Neue Sammlung – The International Design Museum, Munich, DE
April 1 – June 26, 2011

Statement: «Graphic design from West Africa: This exhibition of the Neue Sammlung shows hand-painted posters advertising action films produced in Africa since the 1980s and Hollywood blockbusters. The large-format works by the poster painters reveal a wholely unique, drastic, and occasionally shocking graphic language in which local myths are included as well as stylistic devices found in the commercial advertising strategies of western industrial countries. As a result, the posters go way beyond the allure of pure exoticism. This form of African graphic design poses questions about ‘political correctness’, about visual habits and pictorial traditions, about cultural constitutions and cultural transfer.
With this exhibition of posters from the Collection Dr. Wolfgang Staebler, Die Neue Sammlung – The International Design Museum Munich housed in Pinakothek der Moderne – would like to extend a welcome to its latest neighbour, the HFF (University of Television and Film Munich), whose new building in the Kunstareal museum complex is opening in 2011.»

Filed in Advertising, Africa, Collective exhibitions, Exhibition, Posters, Retrospective | | Comments Off on Deadly and Brutal: Film Posters from Ghana
Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich

We Have Technology

Sunday, March 27, 2011

CCS Graduate thesis shows 2011

We Have Technology
March 27 – April 17, 2011
CCS Bard Galleries, New York

Curator: Laurel Ptak (student, Center For Curatorial Studies at Bard College) in collaboration with Konst & Teknik (Stockholm-based design office)
Statement: «A sustained platform for dispersed communication, research, and knowledge production online, wehavethetechnology.org invites artist Marysia Lewandowska as its inaugural resident to explore the intersection of intellectual property and art.
Marysia Lewandowska is a Polish-born artist based in London who, through her collaborative projects, has explored the public function of archives, collections, and exhibitions in an age characterized by relentless privatization. marysialewandowska.com.
Konst & Teknik is a Stockholm-based design office dealing with art, technology and things in between. konst-teknik.se.
Laurel Ptak is a graduate student at the Center For Curatorial Studies at Bard College interested in network culture, socially-engaged practices, and open culture. laurelptak.com.
We Have The Technology is an internet platform in support of critical cultural production. Arriving online in a moment of post-technological fetishism and post-digital alienation, We Have The Technology works with artists, designers, theorists, programmers, curators, academics, and other cultural producers to vigorously attend to the digital and networked potentialities for production, circulation, and distribution of art and culture in and beyond the browser.»

Filed in Art and Design, Collective exhibitions, Contemporary, Context, Digital, Dissemination, Exhibition, Galleries, Interactive, Participatory, Publishing, Resource, Thematic | | Comments Off on We Have Technology

Panorama
Centre d’art contemporain, Genève

Friday, March 25, 2011

Panorama
Centre d’art contemporain, Genève (CH)
March 25 – June 26, 2011

Curator: Schönherwehrs with Katya García-Antón

Statement: «Panorama, projet développé par Schönherwehrs – studio de communication visuelle basé à Genève – en collaboration avec Katya García-Antón, est une exposition sur les pratiques et les productions récentes du graphisme en Suisse romande. Elle entend en particulier dépasser une perception habituelle du graphisme comme un simple produit à but commercial pour mettre en avant son impact sur la scène culturelle. Elle met aussi à ce titre en lumière ses liens avec l’art contemporain, et l’importance du processus créatif dans la création graphique.»

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Centre d’art contemporain, Genève

Kunstkammer
12mail, Paris

Friday, January 28, 2011

Kunstkammer: The Representation of an Amateur Room
12mail [a Red Bull Space], Paris, FR
January 28 – March 25, 2011

Curator: Charlotte Cheetham (Manystuff)

Statement: «Representations of amateur wonder-rooms of the 17th century present numerous private canvas collections: in a private interior, walls are covered in an accumulation of juxtaposed canvases with no hierarchy, frame against frame, from the floor to the ceiling. The collector can welcome cultured guests and indulge in his own pleasure for aesthetics and erudite knowledge. An ideal museum, these representations of amateur wonder-rooms combine fiction and reality: an imaginary décor, copies of master pieces and hybrid collections.
The graphic design exhibition Kunstkammer shows the duality of these representations – between fiction and reality – by offering an exhibition room of posters, Manystuff’s collection, in which you can find a series of 6 fictional posters specially created for the occasion and gathered together in a graphical wonder-room.
Amateur exhibition room, Manystuff’s collection:
The first version of Manystuff’s itinerant and progressive collection was displayed for the first time in Moscow in June 2010. For Kunstkammer, Manystuff is exhibiting an original extract of the collection of posters created by French and international contemporaries such as Experimental Jetset, M/M Paris, Vier5, Laurent Fétis, Fanette Mellier, Frédéric Teschner, Pierre Vanni and many more. The scenery is a reproduction of wonder-rooms of the 17th century.
Wonder room, commissioned posters: 6 graphic designers and international studios are each to show their silkscreen printed poster, specially created for the exhibition’s wonder-room. With Abäke, Karl Nawrot, Manuel Raeder, Mathias Schweizer, officeabc & Metahaven.
Printer: Lezard Graphique (Strasbourg)
Handmade calligraphic signage: Jean-Baptiste Levée
On the occasion of Kunstkammer, the independent music label Tigersushi presents its own wonder-room: Play tracks here.»

—

Images of the opening and the show are available via manystuff and via flickr.

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12mail, Paris

Started

Thursday, January 20, 2011

Graphic design, exhibition context and curatorial practices: new forms of cultural production is a research project started in 2011 by Giorgio Camuffo, at the Faculty of Design and Art of the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano. Maddalena Dalla Mura has been appointed to conduct research on the topic of the project, starting in January 2012. The working group include Roberto Gigliotti, Hans Höger, Kuno Prey, all professors at the same Faculty. Partners of the project include the Museum of the Image in Breda (NL), the Triennale Design Museum in Milan, and Lungomare Gallery, in Bozen.

The aim of the project is to investigate the relationships of graphic design, and graphic designers, with the exhibition context and with curatorial practices.
In the recent years, graphic designers show a growing interest in exhibiting and curating as means of cultural production, as evidenced not only by their participation in art exhibitions but also by shows that are centered on graphic design and by exhibitions promoted and curated by graphic designers themselves.
What are the implications for the culture of graphic design? How should the engagement of graphic designers in exhibiting and curating be read and discussed with reference to recent debates on the profession and cultural role of the designer? To what degree does this phenomenon differ from what happens in the art worlds? What are the motives driving graphic designers to use the context of the exhibition as a medium of communication, and lead them into curatorial roles? How do graphic designers operate alongside other figures? What discourses and representations of graphic design are built through and around exhibitions?

We will try to answer some of these questions, by combining historical and critical study with case study analysis.

image credit: Emma Dijkman, 2011 (made with tdmkids)

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The Way Beyond Art: Wide White Space
CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, San Francisco

Thursday, January 20, 2011

The Way Beyond Art: Wide White Space
CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, San Francisco, CA
January 20 – February 5, 2011

Curator: Jon Sueda

Statement: «Wide White Space investigates graphic design’s evolving relationship with the practice of exhibition making as it intersects with the visual arts and the work of both artists and curators. All of the designers chosen for inclusion in the show consciously construct a narrative around their work, position themselves as authors of autonomous creative projects, and maintain a conceptually rigorous, research-based and historical approach at the core of their practice.
Curated by Jon Sueda of the San Francisco design practice Stripe SF, and in collaboration with CCA’s Graphic Design and Graduate Design programs, this is the second in a series of Wattis Institute exhibitions that integrate the Wattis with CCA’s faculty and curriculum.
Wider White Space is an adjunct program of conversations with Bob Aufuldish, Rachel Berger, Eric Heiman, Wendy Ju, MacFadden & Thorpe, Emily McVarish, Michael Vanderbyl, and Martin Venezky as well as a rotating series of exhibitions curated by undergraduate and graduate students in design, presented in S1 and S2 over the course of the spring semester.»

Support and partnerships: «Wide White Space is supported in part by public funds from the Netherlands Cultural Services.
Founding support for CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts programs has been provided by Phyllis C. Wattis and Judy and Bill Timken. General support for the Wattis Institute provided by the Phyllis C. Wattis Foundation, Grants for the Arts / San Francisco Hotel Tax Fund, Ann Hatch and Paul Discoe, and the CCA Curator’s Forum.»

Participants: APFEL, Irma Boom, Laurenz Brunner and Julia Born, Sara De Bondt, Mevis and Van Deursen, Dexter Sinister, Experimental Jetset, Will Holder, Indexhibit, Zak Kyes, James Langdon, LUST, Niessen & de Vries, Practise, Project Projects, Yann Sérandour and Jérôme Saint-Loubert Bié, Stedelijk Museum, Sulki and Min, Mylinh Trieu Nguyen, Hansje van Halem, and the Walker Art Center.

—

Following the exhibition, and extending the latter’s scope, Jon Sueda lead a class at CCA focusing on curating and exhibiting graphic design. An interview with Jon Sueda about the exhibition and the class is available at Fisk.
Another interesting interview with Sueda was made by Emmet Byrne at the Walker Art Center’s blog.

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CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, San Francisco

Connecting the Past and the Future
Graphic Design Museum, Breda

Saturday, January 15, 2011


Connecting the Past and the Future
Graphic Design Museum / Museum of the Image, Breda, NL
January 15 – May 29, 2011

Statement: «The past and the present are always connected. And this has persuaded the Graphic Design Museum to make connections between the history and the future of graphic image culture. The exhibition Connecting the Past and the Future shows a selection from the characteristic collection of the museum and makes surprising associations between these objects. From Albert Hahn and Wim Crouwel to the products of EL Hema, work by Stefan Sagmeister and the software tools by John Maeda and Jonathan Puckey.
The exhibition displays for the first time work from the museum’s historical collection coupled to new and recently acquired work made in the 21st century. It shows the bombardment of images and meanings around us that arose through the explosion of media and the proliferation of visual styles.
In Connecting the Past and the Future we show how Graphic Design is an area where designers develop personal fascinations, bring small and large social issues to our attention, link art, design and science and translate information into image.»

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Graphic Design Museum, Breda