Artist Zheng Yuan's latest solo exhibition, from March 16th to May 6th, 2024, is presented at the Madein Gallery in Shanghai. We have designed the poster visual for this exhibition.
Zheng Yuan's works primarily manifest through imagery. Often, when speaking of "imagery," there's an unconscious association with "visuals." However, in Zheng Yuan's works, the superficial visual appeal, such as "beautiful" or "attractive," is subdued, replaced by strong textual elements and a poetic essence exuded especially in the juxtaposition of single or multiple screens. This poetry isn't contrived; it lies beneath the visual surface, gradually revealed through the inherent temporality of imagery.
Prior to designing the poster visual, the exhibition theme was established as "minimalism." The artist aimed to strip away all visual and decorative elements, even repeatedly streamlining textual information, retaining only the bare minimum content to minimize design traces yet still indicate focal points within the almost barren poster. During the design process, the artist became intrigued by some accidentally encountered ink elements, desiring to integrate them with the textual information of the exhibition. Consequently, I printed out selected textual information bearing only layout design traces, then manually processed them a second time, resulting in the "minimalism" of this exhibition's minimal visual.
The exhibition poster utilizes significant whitespace, with all visual textual elements centralized (though not necessarily at the exact center, as I adjusted their positions based on visual perception). Amidst the minimal compression, the only visual element, ink traces, emerges squeezed out from the text.