Uecker
Material Becomes Picture
Exhibition Catalogue design for Museum of Fine Arts Budapest
Günther Uecker’s Material Becomes Picture exhibition was the first station of the Classical Contemporary German series of the Budapest Museum of Fine Arts. The museum wanted to familiarise the Hungarian public biennially with some of the most emblematic – and now world-famous – figures representing the major phenomena and trends in post-war German art movements. This book is the catalogue of the first exhibited material.
Günther Uecker prepares primarily installations, objects, conceptual and kinetic works. His art has centred around the gravest questions facing the world from the start: the experiences of war, destruction of nature by consumer society and humans, the consequences of catastrophes, the dilemma of mortality and leaving an impression on the world. He recounts these using the most rudimentary natural materials: stone, wood, earth, sand, mud, grass, ash, fabric, nails.
As a reflection of these natural materials the catalogue begins with four single-coloured page-pairs: white, brown, grey and black. The use of earth colours runs through the entire book. The pages were given a delicate natural background print with the letters appearing in the darker tones of this colour in increased size - for contrast and better readability.
The first part of the catalogue consists of text and an interview with the artist. To break the question and answer pattern of the interview we used randomly placed documentary photos in the colour sepia.
At the artist’s request, his own words accompany the part presenting the works. The last part is made up of frames from Uecker’s experimental short films. We wanted the cover to echo the strongly manual nature of the artistic creation process. We therefore chose very thin wrapping paper as the protective cover, which we creased individually and folded onto each book, so no two pieces are identical. The title was stamped on the cover also somewhat randomly.
Curator: Kinga Bódi
Graphic design: Bieder Anikó, Gelsei Balázs
Photos: Gelsei Balázs
