An exhibition catalog for Kunsthalle Bern

This publication, designed and conceived with Marietta Eugster, is the catalog of Valentin Carron’s first all-painting exhibition. While the artist has occasionally made paintings since he started exhibiting in the early ‘2000s, he regarded them essentially as three-dimensional wall objects, comfortably at home within his primarily sculptural production. If the 34-odd works specifically made for “Do ré mi fa so la si do” retain the characteristic objecthood of these earlier pieces, as well as a wry self-awareness of their status as decorative furniture pieces for bourgeois interiors, this new ensemble frontally engages with formal and conceptual considerations specific to the history of painting, such as the erosion of 20th century pictorial languages, or the romanticized figure of the painter.

Published on the occasion of the exhibition “Do ré mi fa sol la si do”, Kunsthalle Bern, from February 1, to March 23, 2014.

The book gathers essays by Marlie Mul, Linda Stupart, and Georgia Horgan, that tell the detailed story of the artist’s show cancellation, and connect it to institutional critique; along with photographs of the model the artist had made of the exhibition space of GOMA, with her last proposal.

“This book addresses my cancellation of a solo exhibition that had been planned to open in May 2017 at the Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA) in Glasgow, Scotland.”
—Marlie Mul

Selected for the “Prix Bob Calle 2019”.

Culture, anti-culture, and a recipe for Alsatian plum pie

This artist's book is characteristic of Jean-Michel Wicker's work with typography and graphic design. Wicker injects into all of his work certain letters (e, b and B) like viral recurrent elements, thus recreating an alphabet that multiplies and diffracts in both the exhibition space and books. [...] Playing with multiple typographic combinations and layouts that spill over several pages, Wicker's works, his books and more specifically our edition of “#picturebook1”, disseminate comments on and questions about recurring themes like identity, sexuality, autonomy, freedom, resistance, and transgression in the larger and richer field of culture and anti-culture. While the different assemblages of letters offer multiple typographic études like musical scales, the repetitive system is put to the test, creating nearly abstract geometrical pages. The artist's “#picturebook1” likewise features sketches and freer drawings, and lays out images, details, and signs that appear from one page to the next, a surprising variation on the page layout. The printed works are mixed in with temporary mechanical sculptures in installations which often include furniture that is made by hand from humble, so-called “poor” materials.

Published on the occasion of the exhibition “BBiblioteca ffanafffantastica”, Centre d'édition contemporaine, Geneva, from March 24, to May 6, 2017.

The interaction of colors

Maximage Color Combinations explores how different colors and hues can interact together, and how they can merge from one to another. Without any chapters or formulas, colors travel from shiny to matte, blue to celadon, frozen to boiling, reflective to absorbent, dark light to brain grey, spectral to metameric, sunshine to neon, from Atlanta to Albertville, or from Leipzig to Juba via Napoli and back again, in an attempt to tell infinite stories. The reader will not find here this year’s hot color nor the trends for next season. Rather, each page tells a different story that each user can relate to, reinterpret or reappropriate in their own way.
This book is a tool for designers, artists and printers who are interested in personalized and unique color palettes. Created using between 2 and 5 spot colors, over 120 combinations were generated directly in the offset press by interfering with the ink unit. This unorthodox color-mixing technique helped to create more than 450 spot colors evolving over the 500 different books, turning each one into a set of totally unique combinations.
This publication follows Maximage Formula Guide and Maximage Raster Guide, and is part of the Workflow Research Project (R&D). It was conceived and printed during a workshop at ECAL held by Maximage and the printer Thomi Wolfensberger, Zurich. Workflow is a research project at ECAL led by Maximage and is supported by the HES-SO/University of Applied Sciences Western Switzerland.

Special Colors for Offset Printing

The Maximage Formula Guide Special Colors for Offset Printing is an 80-page book of colors developed by 1CVdg students during a workshop held by Körner Union and Maximage, with the kind help of Carole Courtillé and Violène Pont. Papers printed on include: Uncoated – Amber Graphic 200g/m², Coated – INAPA Imagine gloss 200g/m², Color – Pop’set Colors 120g/m². Printed at ECAL by Benjamin Plantier in an edition of 1000.