The Past is a Stranger, the Future is a Guest

With this exhibition, our hybrid practice of art and design permuted into its most singular form to date, featuring an array of materials condensing our love for the graphic arts into brand new forms. Upholstered paintings, vector sculptures, casted records of original music, custom speakers (designed in collaboration with Todd Irwin), wearable wall hangings, and construction signs, decked out two mirroring gallery spaces to form an abstract didactic questioning the time between then (past) and then (future). With The Past is a Stranger, The Future is a Guest, we find ourselves at the elastic edge of visual expression as we've known it. To commemorate the ride, we published Graphic Arts Future. This book/LP acts as both a compendium to the exhibition and a stand alone work. It features an LP of original music used in the exhibit, composed by Nick Butcher and Nadine Nakanishi, with contributions from Jason Roebke, Keefe Jackson, and Jordan Martins. The book features essays and interviews with artists working in the graphic field including Alexander Valentine (on vorticism), Edie Fake (on emoticons), Anders Nilsen (on abstract comics), Daniel Mellis (on experimental printing), Todd Irwin (on the sound system), Katherine Young (on graphic scores), with and introduction by us. In both text and sound, G.A.F. poses the question “What is the current state of the graphic arts and where it might it land in the distant horizon