MAPnificent! Artists Use Maps
Curated by Yulia Tikhonova

February 1–March 31
FIRST FRIDAY reception, February 1, 6–9pm
AIGA Philadelphia SPACE, 72 N. 2nd St., Philadelphia, PA 19106
www.aigaphilly.org
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Paula Scher, Joyce Kozloff, Doug Beube, Carole P. Kunstadt, Viviane Rombaldi Seppey, Karin Schaefer, Dahlia Elsayed, Alastair Noble, Aga Ousseinov, Paul Fabozzi, Amy Pryor, Irina Danilova, Robert Walden, Adriane Littman, Jeff Woodbury, Brooklyn Art Library, Hand Map Drawn Association

MAPnificent! Artists Use Maps brings together a group of artists who creatively employ the philosophy and technique of mapping to convey information ranging from sociological data to aesthetic stimuli.

The exhibit features paintings, works on paper and sculpture that reflect the artists’ concerns for the current state of our society, conveyed though charts and diagrams, and their admiration of the map as a symbol of longing and the unknown. The works included either illustrate a scientific research in demographics, or a flow of capital, or distribution of patterns, but also present the artists’ reverence for maps.

For some of the exhibiting artists, mapping is a tool to create interactive visuals with the help of sophisticated tools for image manipulation that arrange numbers into intricate geometrical forms.

Maps are primarily received as directional; a subway or bus map is understood as a tool to get somewhere. In fact, the title of this exhibition borrows from a google-map application, MAPNIFICENT, which calculates the time between places via public transportation. For the artists, however, a map is often an end in itself: a work of art, filled with revelation and delight.

Curated by Yulia Tikhonova, Founder of Brooklyn House of Kulture
Upcoming exhibition at The Center for Book Arts: Brother, Can You Spare…a Stack? 

MAPnificent! Artists Use Maps
February 1–March 31
FIRST FRIDAY reception, February 1, 6–9pm
AIGA Philadelphia SPACE, 72 N. 2nd St., Philadelphia, PA 19106
www.aigaphilly.org

Founded in 1914, AIGA remains the oldest and largest professional membership organization for design, with 66 chapters and more than 22,000 members nationwide. AIGA Philadelphia, the first local chapter, was established in 1981. We represent a variety of professions under the umbrella of communication design, ranging from book and type design to interactive design and experience design. Our annual roster of programs includes lectures, exhibitions, workshops, which both enrich the community (through our new headquarters in Old City, aptly called SPACE) and benefit our local membership of over 600 design professionals, educators and students. AIGA’s mission is to advance designing as a professional craft, strategic tool and vital cultural force.