The Dutch graphic designers Armand Mevis and Linda van Deursen, who received in 2012 the Brno Biennial Grand Prix Award, will exhibit this summer their most recent works in a solo exhibition at the Museum of Decorative Arts in Brno on the occasion of the 26th International Biennial of Graphic Design 2014. Therefore they joined forces with the Swiss curator Moritz Küng.

Mainly active within the cultural sector – for museums, galleries, theatres, art book publishers or artists – Mevis & Van Deursen have played a critical role in Dutch graphic design because of their unique approach: They act as authors and editors, rather than as service providers, working in a correspondingly conceptual manner. Their thought provoking and controversially discussed survey Recollected Works, published in 2005, is a proof of this. The pieces overlap, bleed off the edges, and generally defy comprehension in this collage-like and meshed-up monograph. Here, a fraction of a book cover appears, obscured by a poster too big to take in properly; there, a magazine spread, perhaps upside down, peeking out from beneath a gallery announcement, covering up in turn a page from an identity manual (Eye Magazine).

Their solo-show for the 26th Brno Biennial couldn’t be in a bigger contrast to this flotsam approach. Curator Moritz Küng selected together with the designers only a few recent works out of their twenty-eight years of collaboration, giving an insight into the work they have created over the past four years for, among others, for the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, the Guggenheim Museum and the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

The ironic decision to present everything in traditional frames, complete with monumentalized captions, serves as a sly reference to their specific clientele and contexts. Undoubtedly, and in turn, this tongue-in-cheek approach questions the art of display itself. The title of this show, Our Art, reverencing a sculpture by another couple – the artists Gilbert & George – is just another element reflecting their multi-layered approach.

Conceived by Mevis & Van Deursen (NL)Armand Mevis (1963, Oirsbeek, NL) and Linda Van Deursen (1961, Aardenburg, NL) established their office for graphic design in 1987 in the Dutch Capital after having graduated at the Rietveld Academy Amsterdam. They designed numerous books for artists such as Rineke Dijkstra (NL), Peter Downsbrough (US), Aglaia Konrad (AT), Walter Niedermayr (IT), Gabriel Orozco (MEX), Bas Princen (NL), Cerith Wyn Evans (GB) or architects as Delugan Meissl Associated (AT), Christian Kerez (CH), Office Kersten Geers David van Severen (BE) and SANAA (JP), developed numerous corporate identities as for the Dutch fashion designers Victor & Rolf or the City of Rotterdam, Cultural Capital in 2009, and created templates for Dutch magazines as Metropolis M or De Groene Amsterdammer. Armand Mevis is Head at Werkplaats typography in Arnhem and Linda Van Deursen is Director of the Graphic Design Department at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy; both are teaching at the School of Art, Yale University, New Haven (US). and Moritz Küng (CH)Moritz Küng (1961, Lucerne, CH) is an exhibition curator and book editor working above all at the intersection between art and architecture. He worked together with Mevis & Van Deursen since 1988 on more than thirty occasions, mainly the production of exhibition catalogues and artists’ books. He lives in Barcelona.