willem de kooning
Exhibition | Branding
Research
The exhibition is an one-man show, celebrating one of the renowned artists in the 20th century, Willem de Kooning. Categorized as Abstract Expressionist painters, his pictures typify the vigorous, gestural style of the movement. De Kooning never fully abandoned the depiction of the human figure. His paintings of women feature a unique blend of gestural abstraction and figuration. Heavily influenced by the Cubism, de Kooning became a master at ambiguously blending figure and ground in his pictures while dismembering, re-assembling, and distorting his figures in the process.
exhibition design
The location of the exhibition is in the Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen Gallery in the New School, located in the middle of Manhattan. The environment is going clear, empty, and direct to contrast the absurdity of de Kooning's paintings. The walls are painted a greyish white (Gray Owl 2137-60 by Benjamin Moore) which complements all the colorful artworks. Simple furnitures will be placed in the middle of the empty gallery creating a balance of calmness and franticness.
identity
When I was designing the identity, I wish to express the artist's abstractness yet clarity. I decided to apply layering with colors on the identity, which is one of the major methods De kooning frequently used in his paintings. In order to further resembles the artist's characters on the identity. I play with contrasting a thick and thin typeface to create and exaggerate dimensionality like De kooning did with his subjects. The choice of typeface is various of Work Sans, again abstractness yet clarity.
Wall design
The entire space consists of eight walls and they are divided into sections. Each section represents a certain era or change of style in de Kooning painting career. They will be layout chronologically, in this way the audience can clearly see the transition of de Kooning's life events and how they transformed his art expression.
