White Cube Invitation

This is a beautifully simple invitation produced for the opening of the new White Cube Bermondsey space at the end of last year. This is the third space in London, located on Bermondsey Street in south London and opened to the public during the Frieze art fair in October. It is the largest of the gallery's three London sites, providing more than 5440 m2 (58,000 sq ft) of interior space on a site of 1.7 acres! The building dates from the 1970s and was primarily used as a warehouse before the current refurbishment. (designed by Casper Mueller Kneer Architects, based in London and Berlin). The building has been altered to include three principal exhibition spaces, an auditorium and a bookshop.

There were exhibitions in all three spaces at the opening of the new gallery: Structure   & Absence, Inside the White Cube and Cerith Wyn Evans.

The invitation uses an image from the Structure & Absence exhibition:

The following copy is courtesy of the White Cube website: 'Structure & Absence' was a group exhibition that featured the Chinese scholar’s rock as an organising device or motif. A selection of scholars’ rocks were installed in the galleries as unfamiliar objects, disrupting how we usually look at contemporary art. The rocks have a deep but ambiguous history in Chinese culture, acting as objects of both trade and contemplation. Although they are non-figurative objects, their suggestive forms also encourage the viewer to find likenesses of familiar things. Equally, the rocks demand close observation of their surface, structure and material. ‘Structure & Absence’ invited the viewer to bring this blend of imagination and observation to contemporary art. The exhibition was divided into three galleries, each featuring works with a particular visual quality. In the opening gallery, surfaces and surface textures dominated, and the work was characterised by organic forms and colours. The second room featured brighter, more saturated colours, forceful horizontal lines, with paintings and photographs by artists exploring geometric abstraction and the legacy of the Modernist grid. In the third gallery, shadows move in, structures break down and colours are either absent or muted: any dream of order becoming a potential ruin, weakened by entropy and erosion. The three galleries of ‘Structure & Absence’ thus formed a composition, with a rise, climax and fall, reminiscent of a typical dramatic or musical arrangement. ‘Structure & Absence’ featured work by Andreas Gursky, Wade Guyton, Eberhard Havekost, Damien Hirst, Gary Hume, Sergej Jensen, Jacob Kassay, Brice Marden, Agnes Martin, Gabriel Orozco, Eileen Quinlan, Sterling Ruby, Robert Ryman, Erin Shirreff, Hiroshi Sugimoto and Jeff Wall.

The invitation was printed on our Fenner Bright Silver, 300gsm which is a bright metallic silver board with a mirror like reflective finish. Hopefully you can make this out from the pic below:

The image is printed as a one colour halftone using fully oxiding ink (black) on the high gloss surface. Reverse is printed one colour. Print was handled by Danny Kirk at Push.

Design is by freelance graphic artist, Laurent Benner, who's based in London.

www.whitecube.com
http://formsofinquiry.com/contributors/laurent-benner

www.push-print.co.uk

Posted by Justin Hobson 30.07.2012