Intermediate Objects
ALB (Berlin, Germany)
February - March, 2024
Solo exhibition
The term “stencil” originates from a string of etymological relatives: “stansel” (ornament), “estinceller” (glisten), “scintilla” (spark). These Old English, French, and Latin terms capture the careful dance between permeability and imperviousness required of the stencil. During the Paleolithic era, the body itself functioned as the first stencil tool. Cave paintings were created by spraying pigments over one’s hand, a technique later replaced by more intricate carving into leaves and plant matter. The risograph machine is heavily informed by this lineage, creating prints by pushing ink through a rice-based paper stencil, a method which was considered ‘inefficient’ and replaced with xerography in the early 2000s. The Riso corporation’s adherence to stencil based printmaking – an intermediary technology between screen printing and digital printing — ultimately created the conditions for its popularity amongst artists and self publishers. Intermediate Objects, calls on this history to traverse themes in contemporary publishing: from the evolving relationship between an exhibition and its catalog to the surprisingly slippery impermanence of a book object. Through a display of the risograph stencil masters used to print an eponymous research publication - with contributors Daria Blum, Ott Metusala, Jeppe Ugelvig, and Yuri Tuma - Intermediate Objects animates these traditionally discarded products of duplication. Drafted with tools developed by full auto foundry and ultrastudio, the typefaces utilized in the exhibition further explore the collaborative potential of the stencil itself as a creative methodology.
Supported by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation
Images courtesy of Julian Blum