Astrid Seme, Studio

Since more than two decades Rebetez’ oeuvre serves him as a technique to explore our perception of landscape and composition. Based on found imagery from e.g. advertising and other printed media footage, the artist’s collages dissect with simple free-hand cuts our viewing habits. In collaboration with graphic designer Astrid Seme, a book has been created that not only reproduces Rebetez’s works, but also continues the principle of collaging in the layout, creating new collages.

“Fotografie als Motiv/Photography as Motif” – an artists’ book, a work of photographic theory, and a practical handbook of photography all in one volume. It presents an exemplary conjunction of the practice of taking photographs and artistic reflection. Three women artists whose careers each began with professional training in photography (Lisa Rastl and Claudia Rohrauer) or camera (Caroline Heider) reflect on their craft, their mastery of the technical which is often attributed to the male sphere, their theoretical expertise, and their work on the motif. In short: all the facets of image-generating media in the image.
Texts by Ruth Horak, Ulrike Matzer, Andreas Spiegl, and Franz Thalmair accompany this encounter and continue its story alongside the series of images shown.

The visual identity for Sperling, a Munich-based art gallery, deals with both the online and social media profile as well as the design of printed matter, stationery and the gallery space itself. The website features also side by side an online magazine giving contextual information and creating a platform for curators and artists.
Keeping the design elements to a minimum was decisive as printed matter is designed both by external designers and the in-house gallery staff. For this, a wide variety of colours were defined in addition to a new custom typeface, Sperling, with two weights and has been designed for use across the gallery’s communications.

With its grid based simplicity the design is a nod to modernist design principles yet with a forceful and reckless attitude. The interplay of expressive artworks, strong colour palette and bold yet classic typography gives enough variety to react on the individual character of the different artists and exhibitions. On Sperling’s website the interaction between the gallery and its audience—often neglected by a too “neutral” design approach—is honored in a very playful way: users are cherished by a screensaver on the index page when being idle for more than three minutes.

Lois Weinberger (1947–2020) was an early and visionary critic of the dislocations of the Anthropocene and has been hailed as a pioneer of a different, artistic ecology. Beginning in the 1990s, he was a leading voice in the discourse around the relationship between nature and culture. Between ironic shamanism and a conceptual yet poetic austerity, his works illustrate the limitations of human agency and let us experience that our dominance over the natural environment is an illusion.

The website’s fluid text- and image-slideshow creates a spatial notion of the architect’s practice simply by alignment. While the top menu fades with the natural scrolling behaviour the hiding ‘base’ offers an in depth overview of Hirschvogel’s projects and essays. Special focus is put on a high degree of legibility of Hirschvogel’s research texts with sticky images to their respective text sections.
The design of various stationery templates allows in-house printing with a high degree of flexibility.

In reference to the monograph’s title “shift” the layout correlates with four decades of drawings by Swiss artist Silvia Bächli in a formal manner.
Published on occasion of the artist’s solo show at Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe, Germany.

Visual identity for halfway, an architectural research program by Christian Teckert, Christina Nägele and Heidi Pretterhofer in Vienna. halfway manifests as a three-part series of case studies, which build up a consecutive discourse and platform to debate contemporary urban questions.

Exhibition graphics showcasing 18 artists’ books at Steiermärkische Landesbibliothek Joanneum Viertel Graz. Posters are carrying just the informations needed but offering otherwise “blank” sheets of paper to the artist Marlene Hausegger to draw on. Designed to be quickly installed in any orientation the posters are forming ‘wall pieces’ and thus acting also as a signage throughout the museum.

This single-page website, designed for Chilean artist Martín La Roche Contreras, is established within the fertile space between two parallel worlds: Imagery and Words. While a one-pager might initially appear to be finite in its possibilities, this website utilises the potential infinity of digital material to push associations between word and image beyond a simple 1:1 relationship. A single passage runs throughout the page, and hover states are used to activate specific images to lure the user in to explore further and discover major slide shows featuring Martín’s works. What results is not simply a series of binary associations, but instead constellations intended to illustrate important movements within Contreras’ work.

This publication is an anticipating monograph of Stefan Reiterer’s future paintings. By this means, it reverses the production of a catalogue: Instead of documenting old works, it shows 75 templates, that the artist might paint in the future. These templates have their origin in existing paintings which were first 3D scanned and afterwards digitally distorted and transformed. This continues and extends Reiterer’s painting practice that deals with representation of space and its manipulative potential.

The Tarabya Cultural Academy in Turkey is an artist residency programme initiated by the Federal Government of Germany. Tarabya itself is a magical place located on the shoreline of the Bosphorus strait near Istanbul. In an attempt to capture and communicate the atmosphere of its location, the website opens with randomised configured imagery of Tarabya that melts away with the loading of the site’s opening page. Furthermore, subtle animations and transitions on each page reflect the color shades of the Bosphorus as it changes, allowing the website to subtly shift its appearance from visit to visit. Fluidity and user-specific navigations are at the center of this website’s design. This is achieved through expanding menus as well as headers that are either visible or hidden, depending on the user’s device.
The visual identity and its manual includes a wide range of templates allowing in-house teams and local Turkish graphic designers to design communications with a high degree of flexibility. The consultancy is still ongoing.

As part of the ongoing collaboration with the artist residency program Kulturakademie Tarabya, I’ve worked on their bilingual annual book [eighteen/nineteen]. Divided into three sections the book opens with essays on the German Turkish cultural relations followed by 24 artist contributions spanning across different genres including literature, visual arts, music and performance printed in full color with two spot colours. The book closes with a record of events printed on a bright blue paper stock.
The cover follows the graphic identity I’ve created for Kulturakademie Tarabya with bitmapped imagery of shoreline of the Bosphorus capturing four different cover versions.

Christian Kosmas Mayer’s work focuses on critical exploration of archiving and conserving as deliberate acts that create history. The artist book explores the theme of conservation both as a natural and as an artificial process of archiving. The collected images were consequently separated from their captions and arranged as a vertical stream within the book’s narrative. To enhance the archival sources special focus is put on the reproduction: images are printed in full color but with an erratic metallic silver feature.

“Past forward” is a record created by the artist duo kozek hörlonski (Peter Kozek + Thomas Hörl) in order to mark the celebration of 100 years of the Kunstverein Baden and its members. The vinyl’s jacket is produced from the same card stock used in the Kunstverein’s archives, stemming from the notion that the record will itself go on to form a part of the museum’s long history. I was intrigued by the thought that when the record is filed within the archive, it would blend in effortlessly with the rest of the objects, artefacts or texts that represent the previous 100 years of the museum’s work. This is, in material form, an acknowledgement of the past that has come to inform the record’s creation. The cover makes use of the typeface Akzidenz Grotesk—in reminiscence of its progressive past, which at the same time pointed to a neutral future. This seemed to be an ideal fit for the record’s title, in mirroring its own unique position in relation to posterity.

The Fine Art and Design Library of Bergen University holds a monthly series of public one-evening events. It serves as a platform that encourages ideas and discussions around concepts of ‘library’, ‘archive’ and ‘book’ as well as on the conventions of the presentation, reception and discussion of art.

A stream of images allows the user to explore Steckholzer’s oeuvre as a continuous momentum. The website features horizontal captions indicating the user’s scroll position.