Working with...

This Friday 22 June, The Brno Biennial of Graphic Design will host a book launch for an expanded exhibition catalogue accompanying the exhibition Zak Kyes Working With… The catalogue includes contributions by Richard Birkett, Andrew Blauvelt, Edward Bottoms, Maria Lind and Barbara Steiner, among others.

The event will coincide with Swiss-American graphic designer Zak Kyes' first solo exhibition in the United States. Kyes founded the design studio Zak Group, and, in 2006, he became Art Director of the Architectural Association (AA), London. The exhibition Zak Kyes Working With… brings together a range of works by Kyes, as well as works by a host of collaborators including architects, artists, writers, curators, editors, and graphic designers, such as Shumon Basar, Markus Miessen, Andrew Blauvelt, Nikolaus Hirsch, and Barbara Steiner. The exhibition presents contemporary graphic design as a practice that mediates, and is mediated by, its allied disciplines. Kyes, who lives and works in London, is known for his critical approach to graphic design, which encompasses publishing, editing, and site-specific projects for and in collaboration with cultural institutions.

In 2005, under the auspices of the AA, Kyes organized the seminal touring exhibition Forms of Inquiry: The Architecture of Critical Graphic Design, and later cofounded Bedford Press, an imprint that seeks to develop new models for contemporary publishing. By broadening the highly specialized role of the designer, Kyes challenges and further develops today's graphic design practice. While this work constitutes the exhibition's point of departure, its focus is on the conceptual, visual, and economic intersections that link Kyes with his collaborators, revealing and further unfolding the designer's multivalent practice. These intersections vary in form from idealistic to pragmatic, urgent and time-sensitive to abiding and long-lasting. Rather than presenting a chronological overview of Kyes's work, the exhibition highlights the designer's relations with partners, clients, and institutions, and the creative potential of these collaborations to evolve traditional understandings of graphic design, art, and architecture.

Zak Kyes Working With… was curated with Barbara Steiner, and organized on the occasion of Kyes receiving the INFORM Award, an annual accolade presented to graphic designers who develop a practice within the context of applied and contemporary art. The exhibition first opened at the Museum for Contemporary Art Leipzig and then traveled to the AA in London, before its current presentation at the Graham Foundation.

22 June 2012, 19:00
Zak Kyes Working With...: Book launch
25th International Biennial of Graphic Design Brno 2012
The Moravian Gallery in Brno
Governor´s Palace
Moravské námestí 1a, Brno

Through 22 September 2012
Zak Kyes Working With...: Book launch
Graham Foundation
Madlener House
4 West Burton Place, Chicago