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30/6/2014

Wunderkammer

Musee de design et d'arts appliques contemporains - mudac, Lausanne

For its 13th designer carte blanche, the mudac has given over two rooms to Marian Bantjes, who describes herself as a graphic artist. From 2 July to 5 October 2014, she will be transforming the museum’s ground floor into a cabinet of curiosities revealing some of her most recent work.

She is «one of the most innovative typographers working today,» according to Stefan Sagmeister, who was himself invited to stage a carte blanche in 2011. Born in Canada in 1963, and currently living and working on a small island near Vancouver, Marian Bantjes says she fell into graphic design by accident; she is now one of its most prominent and influential exponents. She worked as a book typesetter for 10 years, then ran her own design studio from 1994 to 2003, before dedicating herself full-time to developing her own very personal and experimental style of visual communication. Bringing together typography and the decorative arts, she readily combines natural materials and hand work with the most up-to-date computer techniques.

Marian Bantjes draws inspiration from art deco, rococo, pop art, romanticism and gothic styles, juxtaposing them in unexpected ways to create a coherent visual universe. «I am indeniably playful,» she says ( I Wonder, 2010). Her carte blanche, inspired by her recent monograph Pretty Pictures, leaves us in no doubt. Visitors are invited to wander through a golden-walled labyrinth and discover her inventive works made of crystallised sugar, pasta, embroidery and metal. A large part of the exhibition is devoted to Valentine’s Day, and her longstanding resolution to send out cards annually for 14th February, rather than Christmas, which has given rise to a new creation every year: original graphical compositions, calligraphy from old postcards and reclaimed fan letters to the actor Robert Wagner are just some of the examples.

Marian Bantjes has an affinity with the fantastical, which makes its presence felt throughout the exhibition, in its graphical design elements, which she created, and in the German title she chose to give it.

Bantjes and graphic design
“One day she went into a bookshop to get some change for her bus fare, and happened to see an advertisement for a job at Hartley & Marks, a publishing house. This advertisement, which she discovered by chance, turned into ten years’ experience,” notes her friend Debbie Millman in “Designer&design: Marian Bantjes”. After ten years in Vancouver, where Marian learnt the basics of typesetting and design, in 1994 she decided to set up her own graphic design agency, with a business partner. In 2003, she changed direction. She dropped everything to try a new experience, opting to follow her passion rather than the money. She settled into a house overlooking the ocean on Bowen Island, off the coast of Vancouver, built her current life as a “graphic artist” and “met the challenge she had set herself.”

Image: Sorrow, installation (flowers) at Chicago Design Museum, 2013

Press contact: Danaé Panchaud, public relations +41 21 315 25 27, danae.panchaud@lausanne.ch

Opening tuesday 1 July 2014 from 18.00

Musee de design et d'arts appliques contemporains - mudac
PL. Cathédrale 6 CH-1005 Lausanne
Hours:
July-August: Monday-Sunday 11.00 - 18.00
September-October: Tuesday-Sunday 11.00 - 18.00
Open on every bank holiday

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