Business silhouettes

A.R.D.V.L is the name of the collaboration between artist Raphaël Van Lerberghe and graphic designer-editor Alexia de Visscher. This partnership questions the connections between art and publishing and what unites them. At the crossroads of their practices, the book is in line with shapes and singular contexts of appearance that question for example the extensions of the book and its exposure.

Preliminary to the design of the window : artistic publication Ready•to•use created in duo.

The window, privileged place to exhibit the book, here resembles a theatre stage. The window displays several double pages of the aforementioned book on the scale of scenery components that we usually find inside scenic cages. The« staged  book » is then considered as an architecture that enables us to explore its different parts, rectos and versos communicating with each other in a different space, and to suggest a new reading.

The publication Ready•to•use starts from a simple and minimalist gesture. An object thought for its usage, a book comprised of an image bank of figures is literally distorted : its pages are reproduced only from the point of view of their verso and through their quality of transparence.

The starting point of the project is a reproduction of the series Clip-Art created by American publishing house Dover that dates back to 1996. Described on its cover as follows : Business silhouettes, 96 illustrations libres de droit imprimées sur une face, des centaines d’usages, it illustrates the modern world of business work at the end of the 20^th century, its furniture, its equipment and uses, representations and associated gestures.