Manystuff — Kunstkammer, représentation d’un cabinet d’amateur — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Past: January 28 → March 25, 2011

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.

THE INVITED ARTISTS

Åbäke

Group of graphic designers from London made up of Patrick Lacey, Benjamin Reichen, Kajsa Ståhl and Maki Suzuki. Since its creation in 2000, the group has been working on Kitsuné’s brand image, in collaboration with Hussein Chalayan and Maison Martin Margiela, organizing workshops all around the world as well as a few pick-nicks in London. abake.fr

Karl Nawrot

Karl Nawrot is an independant designer living in Amsterdam. He studied illustration in Lyon (1994 — 1998) and graphic design at the Werkplaats Typografie of Arnhem, Holland (2006-2008). He has been teaching Drawing since 2008 at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie of Amsterdam. voidwreck.com

Karl Nawrot, LM Typeface, Invitation, 2007 Identity for the gallery Lüttgenmeijer (Berlin, Germany) — 210 mm × 297 mm © Karl Nawrot & Walter Warton — VoidWreck

Manuel Raeder

Manuel Raeder lives and works in Berlin, and his job consists in developing collaborations between artists, stylists, booksellers, curators, musicians, photocopiers, academics… Each one of them questions and re-evaluates the relationships between humans and objects. The notion of altered and re-invented history takes up an important part of his work and can be expressed in forms such as temporary books, furniture, typography and traditional exhibitions. manuelraeder.co.uk

Mathias Schweiser

After studying at the Art school of Chaux-de-Fonds in Switzerland, Mathias Schweizer joined the Parisian workshop Graphistes Associés in 1998, before setting up his own label in 1999. His graphical work is constantly navigating between many means of expression establishing links between his videos, typographical conceptions, images and music. He works along with Léonard de Léonard, Seep and Komori with whom he created the label Rolax in 2003, as well as in collaboration with the Rencontres Chorégraphiques Internationales of Seine-Saint-Denis, the CREDAC of Ivry-sur-Seine, the FRAC of the Pays de la Loire district and Galleries Lafayette on the project Antidote. weizer.ch

OfficeABC

After graduating at the University of Aix-Marseille, Brice Domingues organized workshops at the Centre d’Art Contemporain Parc Saint Léger and at the Ecole Supérieure d’Arts Appliqués in Bourgogne amongst others. Catherine Guiral was a student at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Arts Decoratifs and at the Royal College of Art. She also studied at the California Institute of Arts (CalArts). She is currently a researcher in History of Design at the Royal College of Art. Brice Domingues and Catherine Guiral have known each other since 2004 and officially founded OFFICEABC in 2008. The studio is a mobile workshop which works on a system of creation from a distance or in one same place, its methods taking interest in the implementation of processes linked to language, images and the slanted connections between different areas of art. officeabc.cc

Office Abc, Sans titre, 0

Metahaven

Metahaven was founded in 2006 by Vinca Kruk and Daniel van der Velden. Vinca Kruk is a graphic designer and writer. After graduating from the Willem de Kooning Academy, Vinca became a researcher at the Jan van Eyck Academie in 2003. She joined forces with Daniel van der Velden, founding Metahaven, a studio combining design, research and writing. Daniel van der Velden is a graphic designer and writer. He graduated from the Willem de Kooning Academy, and studied in Maastricht at the Jan van Eyck Academie. Daniel joined forces with Vinca Kruk after initiating the Sealand Identity Project in 2003, which inspired them to found Metahaven, a studio combining design, research, and writing. Daniel is a Senior Critic at Yale University. He is a tutor at the Sandberg Institute in Amsterdam, and since 2003 has been an advising researcher at the Jan van Eyck Academie. metahaven.net

On the occasion of Kunstkammer, the independent music label Tigersushi presents its own wonder-room. 10 rare and unknown pieces from the label’s catalogue on one CD edited and numbered up to three hundred examples. 12MAIL is an exhibition room and a place for meeting where you can discover artists and collections of talent, in fields such as illustration, graphic design, photography and fashion.

Manystuff

Manystuff offers a daily selection of designers and international projects and events in graphic design. Followed by thousands of people each day, the blog is read all over, from Paris to London, New York to Berlin, Seoul, Zurich and Amsterdam. Manystuff aims to become the mirror of a practice, the reflection of a landscape, within the framework of administrator Charlotte Cheetham’s daily favourites. Extending its activity as well as continuously promoting new projects, Manystuff will now be editing and working as a commission for new publications specialized in graphic design. By investing in these different activities, the blog aims to develop a laboratory for reflection and experimentation and perfect a process which is currently lacking both formal and theoretical approaches.

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.