Chris Lee: Immutable—Mutant Notations

El Museo
91 Allen St, Buffalo, NY 14202

Opening Friday, Dec 7, 7-9pm

on view through December 22, 2018.

Immutable—Mutant Notations is an exhibition about graphic design and power. It stems from a research project by graphic designer and educator Chris Lee on the history of currency and typography. For this exhibition, he transforms our gallery space into a kind of exploded book. “When you take pictures of these walls,” he suggests, “they become page layouts for a mutant publication about the history of graphic design.”

Using media ranging from clay tablets to 3D-printed objects to print, sound, and video, he assembles an extensive collection of artifacts and research notes into a multi-layered installation that presents an alternative history of graphic design. In this telling, it includes things like rulers, weights, banknotes, musical scores, and land maps, references that span over 5000 years of history.

What these things have in common is a relationship with power that imbues them with a special charge. They are designed to create historical certainty, to resist ambiguity, disagreement, and dispute—to become immutable, unchanging over time. And yet, we may learn to look at them in new ways.

The exhibition includes contributions by Carl Spartz, Colin Tucker, Leo Grant, Xuanao Zhang, and Mirabo Press (Mizin Shin, Rachel Shelton, Bob Fleming).

More information can be found here:

http://www.elmuseobuffalo.org/exhibitions/chris-lee-immutable-mutant-notations/

https://www.facebook.com/events/488258005001781/?active_tab=about

Saturday, December 8, at 3pm

Join us for an afternoon of notes on notes, touching on subjects ranging from standardization to typography, maps, measures, and colonization. We will begin with a guided walkthrough by Chris Lee of his exhibition Immutable—Mutant Notations. This will be followed by a presentation and sound-based workshop with Colin Tucker. The event closes with a discussion and Q&A moderated by Bryan Lee.

http://www.elmuseobuffalo.org/events/extra-credit-notes-on-notes/

This event is free and open to the public.