assume vivid focus
After the successful exhibitions at the Centre Pompidou in
Paris (2008), in
New York (2007) and in
London (2006),
Detour will be in Berlin (from Oct 30th until Nov 16th) at the
Museum der Dinge,
the museum of industrial design and mass culture and is well known for
its focus on artistic procedures in combination with everyday goods.
Detour is an itinerant group show which features the Moleskine
notebooks designed by internationally recognized artists, architects,
film directors, graphic designers, illustrators, and writers. Some of
the notebooks shown contain extensive stories; other contains reports
and studies of contemporary design and art.
All of them deliver an intimate insight into the artists' creative
process. The Moleskine notebooks are exhibited in transparent boxes
designed especially for Detour.
After the successful exhibitions at the Centre Pompidou in
Paris (2008), in
New York (2007) and in
London (2006),
Detour will be in Berlin (from Oct 30th until Nov 16th) at the
Museum der Dinge,
the museum of industrial design and mass culture and is well known for
its focus on artistic procedures in combination with everyday goods.
Fiona Bennett
Mirko Borsche
Detour is an itinerant group show which features the Moleskine
notebooks designed by internationally recognized artists, architects,
film directors, graphic designers, illustrators, and writers. Some of
the notebooks shown contain extensive stories; other contains reports
and studies of contemporary design and art.
All of them deliver an intimate insight into the artists' creative
process. The Moleskine notebooks are exhibited in transparent boxes
designed especially for Detour.
Visitor can leaf through the books after donning white cotton gloves,
provided at the entrance. Among the Moleskine notebooks that all
visitors can leaf through are even displayed the notebooks of artist
such as Spike Jonze, Ron Arad, Joep van Lieshout and Birgit Brenner. The artwork of Joep van Lieshout is
enveloped in a cocoon, its spherical shape hiding the contents of the
notebook. Reduced to a black line, interrupting the continuity of a
polyurethane foam bubble, the artwork does not allow for much
interaction. Ron Arad focuses on the day-to-day
aspect of design, representing moments and even images in which he
develops links with imaginary sounds and displays an innate sense of
design and composition. The film director Spike Jonze turned
his notebook into an unusual scene, exploiting the long format of the
Japanese notebook to create the start and end of a story on the first
and last pages. As if constituting the trailer of a film or its crucial
scene, the notebook is held together by a drawstring, ready to open
like a stage curtain.
Mike Figgis
Abdoulaye Armin KaneBirgit Brenner's notebook is entirely characterized by a weft of threads, the story ending
with an interwoven reel of unspoken sentences that simply slip into the pocket.
After the exhibition in Berlin, Detour will travel on to Istanbul and Tokyo. Through the
changing exhibition locations, Detour is always attracting new artists to the project. Special
care is taken to expose the creative artists that are particularly related to the cities where
exhibitions take place. The notebooks displayed during all Detour exhibitions are permanently shown on the Moleskine website. Raffaella Guidobono
is the curator of the Detour group show in Berlin. She has also curated
the Detour group shows in Paris, New York and London.
The exhibition
design is conceived and realized by Zetalab, Milan.
Moleskine Srl, the company behind the Detour exhibition, and all the participating artists
support the non-profit organization
lettera27, whose aim is to promote the right to literacy,
education, access to knowledge and information.
During Detour, Berlin is also hosting the
myDetour initiative at select bookshops and design
shops. myDetour is designed to give ambitious notebook writers and sketchers an
opportunity to have their notebooks displayed, and to see what their peers are creating.