“You receive carte blanche. For a brief moment you appreciate its dullness, gauge the thickness of the cardboard and its feel. Then, in doubt, looking for a clue, you turn it over. With her, everything can change. The information may be on the back. If its reverse is as immaculate as its face, then print it._
There is in Nogent-sur-Marne, a place and its spaces which, at the end of their history, were devoted to exhibition functions, meaning presence and representation of art, to the work of artists and to the visitor's experience.
Either. Let's try to bring in the graphics by simply trying to inhabit the place, even if it means daring the minor mode for the reverse. To respond to a carte blanche, it would be best if it was front/back:

– present new productions and existing works simultaneously;
– freeing oneself as much as possible from what a graphic design exhibition should be (a recto/verso poster is no longer a poster at the same time as it is twice a poster…) and from what a work should be;
– play and play with the front / back specific to many graphic media: invitation, record cover … and more broadly the activation of mechanics in two stages in these media and in others;
– take advantage of these effects by editing everything like a smooth slow motion. »
Etienne Hervy

From May 19 to July 24, the Maison d'Art Bernard Anthonioz in Nogent-sur-Marne is presenting an exhibition focused on graphic design entitled Do not turn around, a carte blanche given to curator Étienne Hervy. Posters by Pierre Bernard, Paul Elliman, Laurent Fétis, Graphic Thought Facility, Mevis & Van Deursen, M/M (Paris), or Jan Van Toorn, newspapers from Grapus, impressions from Syndicat (François Havegeer and Sacha Léopold), album covers by Loulou Picasso or Peter Saville or a film by Len Lye are presented. Gathered or produced on this occasion, the works constitute a “tracklist”, the soundtrack of a moment and a place. Thus, this exhibition looks at graphic design not to explain how it works in the context of an order, a communication or publishing process, but rather as so many visual punctuations that emerge in places in life, daily life. and the unexpected. These excerpts are considered here for their ability to animate the interstices of the attention that the visitor will want to pay them. They do not respond to any common theme, they are simply able to resonate together, articulated by an effect of echo and feedback. Each artist, in their own way and for their reasons, explores a two-step mechanism: front/back, text/image relationship, series...