Voyages extraordinaires

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• 2024
• digital print
• Various sizes

The exhibition Voyages extraordinaires presented the works from the collections of Frac Picardie and Frac Grand Large – Hauts-de-France. The title was borrowed from a series of stories by the French writer Jules Verne published at the turn of the twentieth century. The exhibition highlighted parallels between the adventurous and experimental spirit found in Verne’s stories and the works of modern and contemporary artists on display.

We found a clue for the exhibition’s graphic identity in one of the stories in Verne’s collection, Cinq semaines en ballon, in which the protagonists travel across Africa in a balloon. This imagery was recurrent throughout the exhibition, with one section titled “En ballon,” and a prominent work called Dolly (1994) by Bertrand Lavier featuring a large deflated balloon near the entrance. In addition to the romantic notion of exploration associated with a balloon, its shape seemed relevant to the exhibition’s international reach thanks to its resemblance to the globe.

To create key visuals for the exhibition, abstract shapes were formed using images of the globe based on different map projections such as Goode homolosine, rectangular polyconic, and Dymaxion. There was a clear relationship between the map and the idea of travel. And as different ways to describe a spherical object two-dimensionally, these shapes could also be interpreted as diagrams for balloons as well as analogies to the diversity in art. In promotional materials, the key visuals were juxtaposed with the exhibition title treated with vertical lines resembling both strings attached to balloons and longitude lines on a map.