By Katie Dominy /asdf 01-04-2010

Alley styles itself as a guerilla gallery for fresh upcoming talent in graphic design, street art and illustration and this Spring, hosts the exhibition 'Random Order' featuring studios Erosie, Graphic Surgery, Zward and Bier & Brood.  

Erosie and Graphic Surgery worked together on a site-specific mural for the gallery walls – entitled the wallpainting clash. Amsterdam-based Graphic Surgery - who are Erris Huigens and Gysbert Zijlstra - take the city as their inspiration for their abstract compositions. Erris Huigens says, “We take visual samples from the city, for instance construction sites. In these areas something is about to be demolished, or renovated. We've always had a deep fascination for construction cranes and their brutal functionality.” Photography often forms the basis of their work; they deconstruct details and elements from their photos and reconstruct and edit intuitively using scanning, digital editing, printing, photocopy and stencil techniques. This process led to the name Graphic Surgery.  

Erris Huigens explained the wallpainting clash with Erosie: “We both wanted to do a wallpainting in the gallery. It mainly was just fun to do it. Erosie was going to work in black and white only, so we decided also stick to black and white only. It simply connects better. The whole space is filled out like a pattern. We often work in a similar way, freestyling, just using a certain set of rules and restrictions. Yet we left little bits of 'restspace' (leftover space), hence the blank parts of wall. Actually we both did separate walls, but in a very delicate way and seen from a certain point of view in the gallery it (almost) seems to be a whole.”

Erosie (meaning erosion) is a designer working in Eindhoven, known for his mix of typography, graffiti and illustration. Apart from the wallpainting, Erosie told us about his Five Words Poster displayed in the exhibition. The inspiration “comes from working on the street; the birth-ground really of the poster as an advertising form as we know it. There is a small jump from doing work in the street as a graffiti writer/ street artist or even from a political motivation to advertising purposes; there is a need to push a message in the public area; to ask for someone's attention for whatever purpose; a political message, an ego-boost or a commercial message etc.  

“I tried to make a poster that is self-referential and in a way pointless because of that. It is about itself but in the meantime points out the over-use of the medium; there is so much information visible in public space, it almost erases its own effectiveness. So the type is handwritten, matching contemporary use of typography (mixing up fonts) and using trendy colours...all for the purpose of catching that attention; and immediately asking the question; why? In that sense it's like an empty message that is a message in itself. On top of that, it reflects my love-hate relationship with design (in this case typographic design); I really like handwritten type, but I simply can't just embrace it only for the aesthetics of it. So it's catch-22.”  

“I actually did another poster that fits the same approach (You Have One New Message) but relates more to how we communicate nowadays; we have so many ways of communicating, how we communicate actually overshadows what we communicate. A possible sign of how complex life is in general nowadays.”

The Zward and Bier & Brood collaboration comes from illustrator Jelmer Noordeman who works across both studios. Working with fellow Bier & Brood member Koen Harmsma, the show displays fourteen screen prints – eight collaborations, plus three from each designer. Original drawings are displayed alongside. The duo also created the window installation.

Jelmer Noordeman tells us, “The drawings I made for my own three screen prints were originally intended for Zward, where we screen printed them onto clothing. Zward is a label Kirsten Spuijbroek and I started. We combine her product design skills and my Illustration for fashion accessories such as scarves and T-shirts.”

Image 1: Erosie and Graphic Surgery
Image 2: Graphic Surgery
Image 3 & 4: Zward and Bier & Brood
Image 5 & 6: Erosie

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