Graphic Graphic is a Belgian graphic design platform founded in the spring of 2023 by Studio Studio. The platform grew out of a shared observation among Belgian graphic designers, that the discipline, the practices behind it and the wider body of Belgian graphic design were poorly visible to the public that encounters the work every day, and that there was little shared language, inside or outside the scene, for describing what Belgian graphic design actually is. Graphic Graphic was set up to close that distance, operating as a space for exhibitions, publications, talks and debates, and as an archive that makes the work and the thinking behind it available to a wider audience.
The inaugural exhibition, Fast Life, took place from 19 to 22 October 2023 at Arsenaal Gentbrugge, within the Belgian Art & Design Fair. The subject was the poster, chosen as the medium that carries graphic design into public space more directly than any other. Following an open call to designers working in Belgium, twenty posters were selected, printed at A1, and shown together. The curatorial thread was visual complexity: overlapping images, layered typography, textured surfaces, shifting reading directions, an inclination towards density that reads as a deliberate counterweight to the minimal and modernist registers that had long defined contemporary design. Taken together, the selection presented a reading of where Belgian poster design stood at that moment.
Studio Studio designed and developed the Graphic Graphic identity, printed matter, catalogue and website, and curated the first exhibition.
