Eyes On the Netherlands

Since almost six years, thanks to Graphic Days®, Turin has become the Italian capital of graphic design. Promoted by Print Club Torino, Graphic Days® is a cultural project that enhances the dynamic aspects of visual design through a wide program of events, open calls and a widespread autumn edition of the international festival at Toolbox Coworking.

This year, in addition to the annual festival, the organization is launching an event entirely dedicated to the Dutch visual design scene: Eyes On the Netherlands. Starting May 14th, a program of exhibitions, workshops and online events will highlight the Dutch visual communication and the contaminations among European trends and influences in this field. Toolbox Coworking, main partner since the beginning, will be the location of the event.

Since the first edition of the Graphic Days® festival, a guest country was chosen yearly, and the Eyes On project was born. The project aims at presenting the excellence of the visual culture of the selected countries through exhibitions and artworks made by some of the most relevant professionals of the chosen nation. After Spain, Poland and Romania, this year The Netherlands will be the protagonist of the event, where the organizers and the contributors will present the artistic soul of the Country. Graphic Matters – the festival of Breda – and The Embassy and the Consulate General of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Italy are the main partners of this initiative. The collaboration for Eyes On the Netherlands follows cultural and artistic partnership started during the 2020 edition of the Graphic Days® festival for the double residency project involving Print Club Torino and the Blind Walls Gallery of Breda.

This unique collaboration will present for the first time the Palace of Typographic Masonry exhibition. The Palace is an imaginary museum of graphic design focusing on the value and diversity of the craft. It is curated by the Dutch graphic designer Richard Niessen, who will be present during the event. This utopian palace brings together

Niessen’s graphic design experiments and his research that together create an interdisciplinary cultural history and new theory of typography.

In the last five years, the project collected more than 750 visual artifacts and described these on index cards. The exhibition itinerary will consist in a tour of an imaginary institution organized as a progression through nine stages: the departments of Sign, Symbol, Ornament, Construction, Poetics, Game, Order, Craft and Practice.

An installation of 26 pop-up drawers shines its light on all kinds of aspects of the creative profession. The issues they explore range from the diversity of writing systems to the ways of constructing narratives, and from the involving aspect of play in design to the endless possibilities of an ornamental system.

Various designers created posters, books, videos, installations, lectures and an interactive tool to represent parts of the museum. During the event the museum will be no longer imaginary, but for the first time people will be able to visit it.

Besides this project, which is curated by Richard Niessen himself in collaboration with Dennis Elbers (Graphic Matters), Graphic Days® will present indoor and outdoor exhibitions with a selection of artworks by Dutch artists and designers that already take part in the festival’s network, such as Studio Dumbar, Trapped in Suburbia, High on Type, Studio Thonik and Daan Rietbergen.

Eyes On the Netherlands presents also a calendar of digital events and insights dedicated to the Dutch visual communication and the contamination between the European trends and influences in this sector. The programme of online events includes the contributions of the Dutch guests involved in the activities. Each guest will talk about the contents presented in the event, from exhibitions to performances. The live streams and special contents will be published for free on Graphic Days® Facebook profile and YouTube channel.
The opening of the event will take place on May, 14th at 6 P.M.

Graphic design, by definition, has a global vocation – says Fabio Guida, Artistic Coordinator of the Graphic Days® project together with the Director of Print Club Torino Ilaria Reposo. Visual language has always transcended national borders, bringing influences and peculiarities combining in international exchange and in the contamination between disciplines. In a historical moment marked by forced immobility, our aim is to bring to Turin a lively and eclectic selection of artifacts and visual artworks that come from a country that have historically signed the stages of graphics and that even today continue to inspire the international panorama through a constant renewal of forms and contents.

The official Eyes On The Netherlands program is available on the official website 

The initiative is promoted by the Municipality of Turin and included in the programme of “Torino Design of the City”.

FURTHER INFORMATION

Graphic Days®
Graphic Days® is a cultural project dedicated to international visual design. From famous icons of history to contemporary innovative professionals, it describes all the aspects of visual communication, including its contaminations with other disciplines. Every year, Graphic Days® involves the most relevant artists, professionals and agencies of the international scene in a widespread festival. The project aims at supporting the cultural value of visual communication, presenting new inspiring tools and promoting exchange with the audience through debates, exhibitions and installations.

Since its first edition in 2016, Graphic Days® has cooperated with an international network and has become an observatory on visual design, thanks to its research on possible connections between this discipline and today’s global issues. It combines social commitment and environmental sustainability. Its main focus is the responsibility of the visual designer in the narration of the relation between different systems and their implications.

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Print Club Torino
Graphic Days® is mainly promoted by Print Club Torino, a cultural and multi-project based center that combines social innovation design and visual culture with a wide programme of activities, events, collaborations and projects that deal with social inclusion and accessibility.
The association combines visual communication and social innovation, representing an informal agency operating in the field of sustainable design. Print Club Torino aims at having a positive impact on society: co-design, permanent research laboratories, collaborations with local museums and cultural entities are the main activities of its strategic approach, as well as projects of civic innovation and culture in collaboration with schools and institutions.