In today's Archive piece we revisit Will Holder's striking publications and invitations for Amsterdam art space de Appel, whose distinctive identity he designed in 2006.
Back in 1982, in Words (Don’t Come Easy), French singer F.R. David lamented his inability to communicate feelings of love via anything but his preferred vocabulary of music. Little perhaps did he know that his linguistic sentiments would come to inspire the title of a journal concerned with writing and language in the arts. Produced by de Appel, a contemporary art space in Amsterdam, F.R. David is a twice-yearly editorial extension of the language-inspired identity co-editor and designer Will Holder created for the gallery in 2006.
“By adopting ‘A is for apple’ (for the gallery’s identity), I wanted to address the motor behind much of the twentieth century's artistic practice, i.e. the perpetual motion between language and images, or art and its translation through and by means of text,” he explains. Now in its second issue, the resulting journal is a handsome paperback, with its contents handily displayed on a bookmark, utilising excess paper from the folded-back cover. Placing emphasis on the reader’s interpretation, but with an editorial helping hand to make thematic connections, F.R. David takes in everything from poetry, lecture transcripts and essays to found letters and fine art.
With the title’s implied solo author in fact the combination of Holder, Demeester and AfterAll editor Dieter Roelstraete, the journal presents a singular voice with multiple personalities, both academic and playful. “It’s my job to bring the disparate voices together and form a composite, through writing,” explains Holder. “It simply becomes a question of designing or articulating language. An involved form of typography, if you will.”
www.deappel.nl
This article first appeared in Grafik 162, May 2008.
