Alphabet: An Exhibition of Hand-Drawn Lettering and Experimental Typography
Opening Reception: April 10, 7 - 10pm
Exhibition Dates: April 3 - 26, F-Su 11am - 3pm
Current Gallery is pleased to present Alphabet: An Exhibition of Hand-Drawn Lettering and Experimental Typography, organized by Post Typography and Artscape. Following the successful opening exhibition in July 2005 at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, Alphabet has been traveling nationally, and is now coming home to Baltimore.
Focusing on an ordinary subject that we see each day, often in the hundreds of thousands, Alphabet presents 26 letters as more than just shapes for conveying information. The 51 artists and designers in this show conceive and interpret the alphabet in surprising and inventive ways, ranging from graceful and polished to witty and subversive. The 63 alphabets featured in Alphabet were created by artists in North America, Europe, and Asia, representing work from well-known typographers such as Ed Fella and Ken Barber to young, rising artists such as Sweden’s Hjärta Smärta and Andrew Jeffrey Wright of Philadelphia’s Space 1026.
The alphabets in the exhibition reflect a range of thinking about lettering that encompasses the conceptual, illustrative, typographic, and beyond. Some of the artists have created their alphabets from a variety of non-traditional media or found objects. Andrew Byrom constructed a series of 26 welded, steel frame tables and chairs, which when viewed from certain angles form a lowercase alphabet (some chairs may be more functional than others). A likeminded, though more fluid approach to dimensional letters is Reagan Marshall’s “Body Language”, exhibited as a series of photographs which document a “typographic ballet.” In the performance, the dancer contorts herself inside a specially-constructed spandex bag to create letters from the human form. Taking a more structured approach, Apirat Infahsaeng conscripts a series of board games to serve typography—one alphabet uses a Connect Four frame as a matrix for a complete character set, while another uses the elements of a Tangrams puzzle to explore different configurations of geometric characters.
FEATURING:
Marc Alcock – Blackpool, United Kingdom
Mike Apichella – Baltimore, MD
Ken Barber – Wilmington, DE
Beppi – Baltimore, MD
Kyle Bravo – New Orleans, LA
Andrew Byrom – North Aurora, IL
Paul Clark – Brooklyn, NY
Ryan Compton – Baltimore, MD
Ryan Corey – Los Angeles, CA
Elaine Lustig Cohen – New York, NY
Delvetica - Tampines, Singapore
E*Rock – Portland, OR
Edward Fella – Valencia, CA
Danielle Foushée – Studio City, CA
Nancy Guiragossian – Montreal, QC
Sibylle Hagmann – Houston, TX
Catherine Hahm – Los Angeles, CA
Tristan Benedict Hall – Baltimore, MD
Drew Heffron – Charleston, SC
Rich Helfrich – Bethel Park, PA
Hjärta Smärta – Stockholm, Sweden
Daniel C. Howe – New York, NY
Apirat Infahsaeng – Brooklyn, NY
Christopher Jackson – Providence, RI
Roman Jaster – Valencia, CA
Jonathan Keller – Pittsburgh, PA
MiHyun Kim – New Bedford, MA
Seth Labenz and Roy Rub – New York, NY
Jean Larcher – Pontoise, France
Andrew Liang – Baltimore, MD
Julie Libersat – Baltimore, MD
Lump Lipshitz – Raleigh, NC
Ian Lynam – Tokyo, Japan
Reagan Marshall – Los Angeles CA
Eduard Matamoros – Round Rock, TX
Michael McErlean – Burbank, IL
Maya Esther Miller – Brooklyn, NY
Jason Monburg – Baltimore, MD
Arjen Noordeman – North Adams, MA
Paul Nudd – Chicago, IL
Elisabeth Prescott - San Francisco, CA
Luke Ramsey and A. Purdy – Victoria, BC
C. W. Roelle – Providence, RI
Theo A. Rosenblum - New York, NY
Tore Terrasi – Raynham, MA
Underware – Den Haag, Netherlands
VisuaLingual – Cambridge, MA
Eric Von Munz – Milwaukee, WI
Western Cell Division – Baltimore, MD
Karen Willey - Amsterdam, Netherlands
Andrew Jeffrey Wright – Philadelphia, PA
Tory Wright – Raleigh, NC
