Press release Press conference at the mudac Tuesday March 6th at 10am Exhibition from March 7th to June 10th, 2012
The mudac is happy to present the COCCHI exhibition featuring works by the Lausanne graphic designer Flavia Cocchi. Launched at the Galerie Anatome in Paris in spring 2010 and since updated and completed for five of our museum galleries, this show displays fifty of Cocchi s projects on behalf of various clients, including the mudac. Since opening to the public in 2000, our museum has regularly commissioned this designer to create its visual communication invitation cards, posters and numerous thematic and monographic catalogues for over 40 mudac exhibitions. Apart from her graphic design pieces, our show focuses on this designer s research methods and varied sources of inspiration objects of all kinds, colour ranges, trinkets, tools or samples of materials. Flavia Cocchi herself designed and set up the exhibition design. This includes a playful introduction with word puzzles to introduce visitors to her teeming universe. Cleverly arranged packing crates serve to present the widely diversified supports for her works be they announcements, exhibition publications, posters, visiting cards, stationery with letterheads, or wrapping paper. Invited to consult many of the catalogues on display, visitors are free to leaf through them to their heart s content. The exhibition highlights the main lines of Flavia Cocchi s creative approach: her passion for typography, her immense mastery of colour, her fine feel for choosing materials, and her great formal accuracy. After granting carte blanche to the designers Ruedi Baur, Mieke Gerritzen and, more recently, Stefan Sagmeister, the invitation extended to Flavia Cocchi represents a tribute at once to the dynamism and inventiveness of Swiss graphic design and to one of its leading representatives. 1.
2. 3. COURSE, DIVERGENCE Flavia happily admits that she is an unsystematic worker, aware that over time she has made this very disorder if not exactly an accomplice then at any rate one aspect of her working method: paradoxically, the confusion of ideas drives a more intense quest for clarification. Intuitive and spontaneous, she is often prone to doubts which force her to explore countless combinations before once again narrowing down the field of possibilities to reveal a single solution sometimes logical, sometimes unexpected. Yet the creative process would remain at a standstill without the ongoing dialogues in which she engages her colleagues and clients; the expression may seem rather kitsch, but it s clear that her ideas need exposure to the sunlight of others responses in order to reach fruition. Certainly dialogue is every bit as vital as it is sometimes fascinating in this type of approach effectively a subtle mix of intention and experimentation, of chance and necessity. Anyone who has crossed the threshold of Flavia s studio, even on a single visit, will be familiar with the apparently nonchalant way she asks questions, exhausting the range of nuance between practical experience and imagination, taking pleasure in revisiting ideas they thought were done and dusted, leading them towards design schemes that are simple and perfectly resolved. Various trails are pursued, various strategies are considered, then by pruning and substracting she reduces the material to one or two proposals which she submits to the client. The procedure is inherently risky: after all, revealing the various stages of the creative journey the process of making is a kind of self-exposure. Yet this is all about affinities; curiosity and openness of mind play a major role in the score the designer and her clients are playing. And this designer is clearly more at ease in an intimate register, based on mutual trust, than in areas where commercial constraints are paramount and the room for manoeuvre is limited. Nadja Maillard 4.
BIOGRAPHY Born in Lausanne in 1962, Flavia Cocchi is a graduate of Geneva s School of Decorative Arts. She obtained further training, especially in typography, thanks to a four-year stint at Werner Jeker s design studio. From 1989 to 1991, she worked for the institutional communication agency Anatome in Paris, collaborating on the Louvre Museum signage project and various projects on behalf of the Ministry of Culture and the Ministry of Buildings and Works. She left for Italy in 1995, where she worked at Benetton, under the artistic direction of Massimo Vignelli. In 1997 she began working freelance in the Vaud canton capital of Lausanne, accepting cultural and institutional commissions in parallel. She was asked to take charge of visual communication for various institutions, including the mudac (Museum of Contemporary Design and Applied Arts) in Lausanne, the Museum of Yverdon and Region, the Beau-Rivage Palace in Lausanne, the Théâtre de l Octogone in Pully, and the Théâtre de la Comédie in Geneva. She also began designing books and catalogues for artists and architects. From 1996 to 2004, she taught graphic arts at Geneva s School of Decorative Arts. 5.
6. LA COMÉDIE THEATRE, GENEVA / 2011 Very shortly after his appointment as director of Geneva s Théâtre de la Comédie, Hervé Loichemol engaged Flavia following a competition to redesign the theatre s visual identity. Hervé Loichemol is a producer whose vision of the theatre has direct aesthetic implications. Their meeting took place in Flavia s studio, where he encountered works which were, as he could see, constructed around a void. A close and productive working partnership quickly evolved. One element proved decisive in the development of the new visual identity: the fact that for a period of eight years at least the theatre would be thrown into disarray pending the construction of a new building. This situation prompted Flavia to draw inspiration from the signage of the building site. Yet the building s neo-classical character it was designed by Henry Baudin and strongly influenced by Louis XVI style also needed to shine through, along with the need to make a strong and simple statement about the theatre s place in the contemporary cultural landscape. And from the outset the graphic system devised also needed to be not just appropriate to the venue but also capable of adapting to all the various communication media. Flavia s designs use Le Corbusier stencil lettering favoured by generations of architects in counterpoint with a contemporary slab-serif font, Deck, which combines solid serifs with a sans-serif look. This blend of classical and modern is also a striking feature of the building s façade: the listed monument has had its windows covered by panels with wide red stripes, straight from the building site. A geometrical bias and this classic/modern combination run through the entire communication scheme: a diagonal line divides the paper surface into two right-angled triangles. The decision to present information in a nonhierarchical way which prevailed at the Octogone is reprised at the Comédie: blocks of text comprising the theatre name, the title, the length of the show, the author, the director, etc., are presented as a single body: only a change of colour signals the different types of information. When the theatre communications manager expressed some concern that the title of the show was not prominent enough, Flavia suggested not changing its size but emphasising it by adding dates and making the whole of the text block larger. Ultimately these adjustments during the development process showing in themselves that nothing is ever fixed and permanent helped to clarify the message and enhance visibility. The same is true of the way images are handled: faces, half-obscured by one of the triangles, become no more than eyes looking out at the viewer in a direct and engaging manner. Stripes and diagonals offer an almost infinite array of possible variations, richly exploited and varied by the designer across the varous media. N.M.
PRACTICAL INFORMATION: Press conference Tuesday March 6, 10pm. With Flavia Cocchi in attendance. Opening reception Tuesday March 6, from 6pm. With Flavia Cocchi in attendance. Catalogue Published for the occasion, a bilingual (French/English) catalogue, édition Infolio, 272 pages, colour illustrations, essays by Chantal Prod Hom, Susanne Hilpert Stuber, Nadja Maillard and Leyla Belkaïd. Catalogue price: CHF 32.- Public guided tour Tuesday May 8 at 12:15pm, by Susanne Hilpert Stuber and Flavia Cocchi 7. Jeudi design (Design Thursday) Thursday March 15, from 12:30 to 2pm Tour of the exhibition accompanied by the designer, and discussion centred on her work. CHF 15.- / advanced booking required at 021 315 25 30 Workshops Family workshops Sundays May 6 and June 3 Advanced booking required at 021 315 25 30 8. Parallel show Couleur 3 30 years Opening hours Tuesday to Sunday 11am to 6pm Closed on Mondays Holidays (including Mondays): open from 11am to 6pm 9. 1. Views of THE EXHIBITION AT THE GALERIE ANATOME, Paris / 2010 2. PASSIONs D ORANGES-PAPIERS D AGRUMES (citrus-fruit wrapping) Catalogue / 17 x 17 cm / 2008 3. ARCHILAB 20 ans d architecture Book (20 Years of Architecture) / 24 x 26.5 cm / 2009 4. the visual arts holdings poster F4/ 2007 5. 20 ANS AGENCE ANATOME (20 Years Anatome Agency) poster F4 / 2005 6. LA COMéDIE DE GENèVE, theatre VISUAL IDENTITY / 2011 7. Festival culturel japonais (Japanese cultural festival) Lausanne, poster F4 / 2007 8. FACE AU MUR-PAPIERS PEINTS CONTEMPORAINS (Covering the Wall Contemporary Wallpapers) catalogue / 30x 21 cm / 2010 9. AIR EN FORME (inflatable objects) Catalogue / 17 x 22 cm / 2000 Illustrations A CD-Rom with pictures of the exhibition is available upon request. The pictures can also be downloaded at our Internet site www.mudac.ch. Click on press. Login: presse2012; password: images2012 Press contacts Susanne Hilpert Stuber, mudac, 0041 21 315 25 30 susanne.hilpert-stuber@lausanne.ch Address mudac, Musée de design et d arts appliqués contemporains Pl. de la Cathédrale 6 CH-1005 Lausanne phone +41 21 315 25 30, fax +41 21 315 25 39 info@mudac.ch; www.mudac.ch With the generous support of: