Eight months ago when I received an email invitation to participate in an international exhibition Typography in Contemporary Art, little could I imagine that I would participate in its opening. I have never visited Leipzig before, so I decided to pack my things and do it.
Thanks to the Mrs Christine Hartmann, the curator of the exhibition, and Dr Sussane Richter, the director of the museum and there warm welcome, it almost felt like home. During my entire stay there, the museum staff was very helpful and informative, and I had the possibility to go around the museum all by myself for which I’m really grateful.
For the first couple of days I’ve been preparing my works for the exhibition opening. Along with the existing works I decided to make a typographic installation from hot metal type from the holdings of the museum. It was fun to create something right on the spot. I created a new sentence written in a special hot metal typeface named “Marina”.
Exchanging cold design for hot type
The exibition “Typography in Contemporary Art” gathered around 40 artists who deal with type and typography in their work. Some of the artists presented in the exhibition were Andrew Byrom, Lisa Rienermann, Stefan Sagmeister, Zwölf, Camilo Rojas, Reona Ueda, Lee Stokes, Domingo Kdekilo, Sascha Grewe, etc. The exhibition included a wide range of genres, such as drawings, book and paper art, photography, sculpture, multimedia, installation, graffiti and public art.
The ambition of this exhibition project is to show the omnipresent existence of lettering in daily life and its influence on public perception. Typography and lettering in context of art opens quite a new perspective to the topic – for laymen, art connoisseurs, as well as professionals in graphic design.
I had a great time visting Leipzig and participating in the exhibition. It was nice to meet other artists and exchange ideas and experience. From what I hear the exhibition is a success (it is still open and will be until July 17). If you are in Leipzig you should definitely go there.
