Paysages exhibition by EPA Paris-Saclay
The EPA Paris-Saclay is a public development authority that manages scientific, urban and cultural programs for the south of Paris. This project of urban development is the largest in Europe: its goal is to build bridges and find new paths between city and nature, and between agriculture and urban ways of life. For its tenth anniversary in 2021, it organizes a travelling exhibition called Paysages that focuses on the idea of landscape: the organization invited seven artists to work on it and to offer a singular point of view on this term which is usually associated with aesthetics and the history of art. Among the contributing artists we find painters, photographers, digital artists, and illustrators. Each of them has chosen to explore the landscape either from an urban, natural, or human perspective, each of these viewpoints implying different approaches – sociological, ethological, ecological, etc.
Since 2014, LMpolymago is in charge of EPA Paris-Saclay’s identity: the studio created a functional design based on Hoefler & Co’s Gotham and a signature red dot, inspired by cartography. It works as a strong marker in every item of the visual communication. The poster for Paysages displays the different elements of the identity with the addition of Big Daily from Production Type, used to set the title of the exhibition. Far from the boldness of Gotham, Big Daily offers a smoothness that seems appropriate for an art exhibition that focuses not only on construction but also the poetics of the landscape. The letters, scattered in the format and set in different sizes, seem to emerge from a distant horizon, and illustrate a landscape through the use of perspective. The letters as much as the thin thread that links them all brings a tension in terms of representation: while the letters are in a three-dimensional space, they and the interlinked thread and dots are a conventional representation used in two-dimensional maps. This abstract image gives unity to the diversity of artworks presented in the exhibition.
In addition to the poster, a booklet composed of postcards was conceived for the exhibition: landscapes being the archetype of images printed on postcards, it seemed natural to offer this kind of object to the visitor. The website created for the event mixes both the identities.
