Introduction

Exhibitions

Publications

Project types

Commissioners

Release dates

⇆

SMCO-Poster-0308-1

    Sulki & Min: Clarifying & Obscuring

The poster for our exhibition in Transtage, Hangzhou, was collaboratively created by the curators and us. True to the spirit of the book Explained, a starting point of the exhibition, we wrote a commentary on a poster that had not been made yet, and they came up with a design in response to the commentary, reversing the natural order of things. Here is our commentary on the imaginary poster:

Can you make a poster that is clear and obscure at the same time? This poster somehow manages to meet this paradoxical challenge by allowing multiple layers of interpretation. On one level, it clearly announces an exhibition of the work of Sulki & Min to be presented at Transtage, Hangzhou, from March 24 through May 26, 2024. On the other, it obscures the very message by inviting the viewers to question its meaning.

The materiality of the printed poster – the choice of paper and printing method – is translated to the temporality of the online version, where time, not any optical simulation, conceptually replaces the physical properties. This play between different dimensions, between the actual and the virtual, also parallels the relationship between the notions of clarity and obscurity.

The design is bilingual: the text is in both Chinese and English. As often recognized, Chinese characters may work like an image to non-Chinese speakers, in a similar way that alphabet letters may appear figurative to Chinese readers. The design acknowledges this and plays with it. Here, again, the oscillating relationship between image and text corresponds structurally to other oppositions, such as clarity vs. obscurity, and the physical vs. the temporal.

  • Designer:
  • Shao Nian