Design star exhibits in Lausanne
What happens when you give a designer carte blanche for an exhibition? The Museum of Design and Applied Arts in Lausanne – mudac – decided to find out.
The commercial work of New-York based Austrian Stefan Sagmeister, known for his off-beat and humorous style, will be on display in Lausanne until June.
“To be a designer, you have to be capable of working for quite a large public in areas which are gradually being saturated,” Sagmeister says.
“For more than 25 years I have always made new discoveries, I take on new challenges and I never get bored. And if I do get bored it means I have to go further.”
The deadpan title of the exhibition – Sagmeister: Another Exhibit about Promotion and Sales Material – covers a treasure trove of recently commissioned projects, including CD covers, posters, catalogues, print design projects, furniture and adverts.
The exhibition is divided into four parts reflecting the categories Sagmeister distinguishes among his commissions: the promotion of culture, the promotion of companies, the promotion of his friends and, finally, his self-promotion as linked to his agency, Sagmeister Inc.
As Sagmeister explains, “I feel myself to be totally part of the world. As a graphic designer, our clients can be rock groups, museums, cultural institutions or a commercial, I am always comfortable.”
Sagmeister likes to set up actual performances to produce the print design of his projects, and has been known to spell messages out in everything from bananas to coins, sometimes with the help of the public, or even live animals.
He takes the banal expression “everyone always thinks they are right” and attaches it to a giant white inflatable monkey. The creature’s upper body is trying to escape to the Lausanne sky, while its lower half remains trapped inside the museum.
Carte blanche
Local design studio Big-Game was entrusted with the installation of the exhibition while the catalogue and communication material was created by Martin Woodtli, a young Zurich designer and former collaborator of Sagmeister’s in New York.
This is the 11th “carte blanche” exhibition hosted by the mudac. The concept consists of entrusting the creation of an exhibition to an artist and inviting his or her friends.
“It’s not new but I like the idea that it comes from a museum,” Chantal Prodhom, director of the mudac told swissinfo.ch.
“Our initiative seeks to be very contemporary and it is exciting to offer our space to a group. Stefan arrived saying: ‘OK I’ve already done lots of exhibitions and, as I don’t like to repeat myself, can I delegate the carte blanche offered to me to other people I’d like to work with?’ And that’s how it was.”
Humour and simplicity
Whether it’s for corporate commissions or personal creations, Sagmeister performs all the way; he even uses himself sometimes as a prop.
For a poster promoting two shows of his work in Japan in 2003, he did a play on
the classic before-and-after comparison (see gallery). The top picture shows the designer in his underwear sitting on a sofa; the bottom picture shows him a week later and having gained 11 kilos after eating all the food articles displayed around him. Self-mockery is very much in evidence.
“Humour is a very direct communication strategy, not necessarily in the use of jokes, but more in the surprise effect. It’s crucial in creating a poster, because I know from the first impression that I have no more than three seconds to keep the attention of the viewer, therefore it is worth being diligent,” he explains.
Sagmeister Inc., his office in New York, is deliberately kept on a small scale. “A small boat easy to manœuvre, because I try to stay free,” he says.
The designer has worked on material for David Byrne, Lou Reed and the Rolling Stones, for which he received two Grammy music awards. He has also produced work for the Levi’s brand and an American NGO which is conducting a campaign against budget disparities by the government there (see gallery).
Time out
To avoid getting drained of creativity and bogged down by his professional commitments, Sagmeister regularly schedules year-long sabbaticals for himself.
His plan is to take a year off every seven years and his office is closed during this time. During his most recent break he missed out on an opportunity to design a poster for Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign.
Sagmeister does not distinguish between an ad for a big circulation magazine or a personal exhibition in a gallery. “The only difference is in the daily realisation. It would be more complicated to convince the magazine to accept my ad than to exhibit in a gallery where I have total autonomy.”
“Some of my friends think big companies are just really bad, but I don’t believe that at all. Many big bosses do excellent work and I have no shame in collaborating with them.”
“There are as many attentive and humane people as you will find working for NGOs or cultural institutions. Sometimes even more. I have never detected the slightest difference in human qualities between those two groups of people.”
Iconic Switzerland
What does Switzerland evoke for this New York Austrian?
“The first thought that comes to mind is that this country has lots of people who take their work very seriously, who really like what they do and do it well, whatever their trade: mason, butcher, printer. I’ve never seen anything like it elsewhere.”
How would Sagmeister sell Switzerland?
“I think Switzerland sells itself very well without me,” he laughs.
“If I were asked, which would be an extraordinary challenge, I would start by reflecting, exploring the base. Switzerland is an incredibly powerful icon, and I think that the whole world can only envy it this quality.”
Stefan Sagmeister: Another Exhibit about Promotion and Sales Material. Exhibition from the “carte blanche” series by the Museum of Design and Applied Arts in Lausanne.
Produced by Mudac, it runs in Lausanne until June 13.
It will later be shown at the Museum of Decorative Arts in Paris from October 13, 2011 to February 19, 2012.
The installation was entrusted to the Lausanne agency Big-Game. The catalogue, poster and communication material were produced by Martin Woodtli, a former collaborator of Sagmeister’s in New York.
Born in Austria in 1962, Sagmeister studied at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna and the Pratt Institute in New York.
He has won two Grammy Awards for his CD covers (Talking Heads and David Byrne and Bryan Eno’s album). He has also received several international design awards.
He has been based mainly in New York for 17 years, founding his own agency Sagmeister Inc. in 1993.
Books: Sagmeister, Made you Look (2001) and Things I Have Learned So Far In My Life (2008).
Personal exhibitions in Zurich, Vienna, New York, Berlin, Tokyo, Prague and Seoul. He also gives talks around the world.
The Belgian Elric Petit, the Swiss Grégoire Jeanmonod and the Frenchman Augustin Scott de Martinville met at the Lausanne University of Art and Design, where they studied industrial design. They opened Big-Game in June 2004.
Known among other things for playfully amusing furniture and objects, Big-Game have created objects for companies such as Moustache of France and Karimoku of Japan.
The designers won the Swiss Federal Design Prize in 2006 and 2010, their work is in the Museum für Gestaltung in Zurich, the Musée du Grand-Hornu in Belgium and the Georges Pompidou Centre in Paris.
Big-Game also teach courses at their alma mater in Lausanne.
Born in 1971, Woodtli studied at the Zurich School of Art and worked for David Carson and Stefan Sagmeister in new York.
In 1999 he set up his own office in Zurich.
In 2007 he won Swiss Design Prize first prize.
(Adapted from French by Clare O’Dea)
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