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x, y, z
Mickalene Thomas Internship
Rainer Ganahl: If the Price Is Right
Hummingbird Warrior Visual Identity
IFPDA Print Fair 2024 Booth
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Coplan Hurowitz Art Advisory
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*Non-underlined: to be updated
Location:
Botanica Grove Gallery
64 Grove St.
Brooklyn, NY 11221
Overview
x, y, z: through dimension was an experimental group art exhibition hosted at Botanica Grove Gallery in Brooklyn during the summer of 2024. The exhibition combined painting, sculpture, digital art, and performance to explore ways in which fine art can transcend the dimensions in which it is normally confined. Some of the artworks in the show included paintings with 3D textures, sculptures that move autonomously, and performance that occupies time and space, for instance.
The gallery commissioned a visual identity for the show to be implemented in exhibition pamphlets and social media posts, as well as technical writing for the exhibition description.
Additionally, the gallery offered the opportunity to co-curate the artwork featured in the exhibition.
Exhibition Description
Grids are everywhere. They’re on your waffle. They’re in your Chex Mix. They’re in a beehive. They let you play Chess or Chutes and Ladders or Chinese Checkers. They form and reform as you try in vain to solve that messy old Rubik’s cube. They organize your keyboard. They’re on the SAT. They separate neighborhoods. They graph the stocks. They distribute electricity. They keep mosquitoes out of your porch on those sticky summer days.
x, y, z aims to explore grids. While hard lines and strict axes can be controversial, they can inspire meaningful conversation and expression.
Naming
The title of the show references the three axes in three-dimensional space. As an exhibition that demonstrates how artwork can transcend the dimensions in which its medium may attempt to confine it, x, y, z acknowledges the presence of these three axes while physically and metaphorically transcending their traditional limitations. We decided to keep the name in all-lowercase to further reference the x, y, and z axes, which, in graphs, are usually labeled in lowercase. Additionally, we separated each axis in the title using commas.
We then created a subtitle, “through dimension,” a reference to how the artworks we displayed transcend the dimensions in which their respective mediums may confine them.
Visual Identity
Courtesy of PrepMaven
With the visual identity established, we designed a tabloid-sized, printed poster to display information about the show, artists, and venue. The poster features the signature three-axis grid taking up the negative space surrounding the typography. The title of the show is displayed in the top-left corner, followed by the subtitle, logistical information about the show, and the names of the artists and the curators at the bottom.
The Instagram post design for the show featured the same visual identity used in the poster –– a simple, three-axis grid surrounded by information about the show, formatted into a 1:1 post.
Artists
David Ayala is a queer, gender non-binary Latinx artist making work that explores the complexities of their and their community’s existence in the heart of the Imperial core. Their paintings are distinguishable for their extreme textures that blur the line between painting and sculpture.
Elric Ford is an American digital artist whose work concentrates on the relationship between the human heart and mathematical, graphical representation.
France Rreally is a sculptor and filmmaker who envisions and actualizes alternate realities using found objects.
Isabella Scott is a Brooklyn-based artist known for her Waste Paintings series, where geometric paintings come to life through recycled paint, repurposed canvases, and found frames.
Kip Jacobs is a Brooklyn-based artist who uses a combination of CNC machining, artificial intelligence, and manual painting to create artworks that challenge the idea of traditional authorship.
Mike Picos is a painter whose work incorporates elements of retro software.
Timo Kuzme is a performance artist who explores the nature of being and becoming through their lens as an agendered person, deciphering the body through paint and mark making.
We designed a continuous, looping animation to accompany the media posts for the show. The animation features the signature three-axis grid expanding and contracting to reveal information about the show. Throughout the animation, the typography changes orientation and size to further convey feelings of transcending confinement.
Challenges
Cohesiveness: Designing a cohesive visual identity for seven multidisciplinary, emerging artists, each of whom possesses their own distinct visual style, proved difficult. However, maintaining a simplistic, black-and-white visual identity allowed the artworks themselves to shine without interference by the visual identity.
Handling: Retrieving the art pieces to be displayed was especially challenging. Coordinating moving trips for works that extend beyond 6 feet in some dimensions was no easy feat, and moving them into the gallery was no easier.
Installation: Though I hadn’t anticipated it, I found myself installing the artworks for this show alone. I spent 48 hours straight, without sleep, painting the gallery walls white, planning where each piece would be displayed, and hanging the artwork. This experience was absolutely a lesson in patience and endurance, but the result –– and the ability to say that I’ve curated an art show –– was worth it to me.